The works of Benjamin Disraeli : Earl of Beaconsfield ; embracing novels, romances, plays, poems, biography, short stories and great speeches

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THE WORKS or

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

,EARL or BEACONSriELDc

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BIOGRAFHY.SHORT STOWES
AND GREAT SPEECHES
WITH

A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION Kf

EDMUND GOSSEXLU.

LIBRARIAN TO THE
HOUSE or LORDS.
AND

A BIOGRAPHICAL PRErACEKf
ROBERT ARNOT,M.A.

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MWALTERDUNNEniMishcr.

LONDON AND NEWYORK„
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FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING BY FRANCIS VAUX WILSON

' You are beneath abuse, as you are beneath every
sentiment but one, which I entirely feel.'

(See page 219.)

SYBIL

OR

E Two Nations

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

EARL OF BEACONSFIELD

yOLUME I.

M. WALTER DUNNE

NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright, 1904, by

M. WALTER DUNNE

Entered at Stationers' Hall^ London

CONTENTS

Chapter I. page

THE EVE OF THE DERBY I

Chapter II.

PHOSPHORUS WINS . 8

Chapter III.

THE HOUSE OF EGREMONT 1 3

Chapter IV.

AN IMPORTANT STATE SECRET .... 36

Chapter V.

THE IDLE RICH 40

Chapter VI.

'le roi est mort; vive la reine!' . . 51
Chapter VII.

marney abbey 59

Chapter VIII.

' THE question OF THE DAY ' . . * . 68

Chapter IX.

A significant event 73

Chapter X.

A STROLL THROUGH THE ABBEY .... 79

Chapter XI.

A seraphic appearance ...... 86

(vii)

viii CONTENTS

Chapter XII. page

DOMESTIC TYRANNY 95

Chapter XIII.

TRANSFORMATION OF A WAITER TO A NABOB I07

Chapter XIV.

THE FAIR RELIGIOUS II5

Chapter XV.

YOUNG BLOOD 121

Chapter XVI.

DEVILSDUST 1 29

Chapter XVII.

AUBREY ST. LYS 1 44

Chapter XVIII.

A FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE 1 55

Chapter XIX.

A HERALD OF THE DAWN 162

Chapter XX.

AN angel of MERCY I70

Chapter XXI.

A NOBLE DUKE 1 78

Chapter XXII.

A FISHING TRIP AND WHAT CAME OF IT . 1 87

Chapter XXIII.

TRAGEDIES OF A MINING TOWN . . . . 1 98

Chapter XXIV.

A FAMILY QUARREL ....... 208

Chapter XXV.

THE TOMMY-SHOP . , 221

Chapter XXVI.

WODGATE 230

CONTENTS ix
Chapter XXVII. PAGE

GERARD'S NEW NEIGHBOUR 239

Chapter XXVIII.

A MORNING STROLL 249

Chapter XXIX.

THE BISHOP OF WODGATE 254

Chapter XXX.

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE PEOPLE . . . 259

Chapter XXXI.

STEPHEN PAYS A VISIT 274

Chapter XXXII.

PARTING . . . . ^ . . . . . . . 278

Chapter XXXIII.

POLITICIANS IN PETTICOATS 290

Chapter XXXIV.

A BIRTHDAY GIFT 298

Chapter XXXV.

SOCIAL INFLUENCES 303

Chapter XXXVI.

A TORCHLIGHT MEETING 3 ID

Chapter XXXVII.

THE RIGHTS OF THE MASSES 319

Chapter XXXVIII.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY 33O

Chapter XXXIX.

A MAKER OF PEERS 339

Chapter XL.

egremont's secret 350

Chapter XLI.

MORE secrets 356

X

CONTENTS

Chapter XLII. page

'a glorious vision' 363

Chapter XLIII.

INTRIGUES 368

Chapter XLIV.

the flattering tongue of hope . . 376

Chapter XLV.

fears of lord de mowbray .... 383

Chapter XLVI.

an awkward ' hitch ' 389

Chapter XLVII.

'the GULF IS impassable' 396

Chapter XLVIII.

riots at birmingham 4o5

I

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

*YOU ARE BENEATH ABUSE, AS YOU ARE BENEATH
EVERY SENTIMENT BUT ONE, WHICH I ENTIRELY
FEEL.' (See page 219) Frontispiece

LOOKING AROUND, HE OBSERVED IN THE CEMETERY

TWO MEN. ONE WAS STANDING BESIDE A TOMB. 85

EGREMONT FELL UPON HIS KNEES, AND GENTLY TAK-
ING HER HAND HE PRESSED IT TO HIS LIPS . . 402

(xi)

I WOULD INSCRIBE THIS WORK TO ONE WHOSE NOBLE
SPIRIT AND GENTLE NATURE EVER PROMPT HER
TO SYMPATHISE WITH THE SUFFERING; TO
ONE WHOSE SWEET VOICE HAS
OFTEN ENCOURAGED, AND WHOSE TASTE AND JUDG-
MENT HAVE EVER GUIDED, ITS PAGES:
THE

MOST SEVERE OF CRITICS, BUT —
A PERFECT wife!

(xiii)

ADVERTISEMENT

(1845)

The general reader whose attention has not been
specially drawn to the subject which these volumes
aim to illustrate — the Condition of the People — might
suspect that the Writer had been tempted to some
exaggeration in the scenes that he has drawn, and
the impressions he has wished to convey. He thinks
it therefore due to himself to state that the descrip-
tions, generally, are written from his own observation;
but while he hopes he has alleged nothing which is
not true, he has found the absolute necessity of sup-
pressing much that is genuine. For so little do we
know of the state of our own country, that the air
of improbability which the whole truth would inev-
itably throw over these pages, might deter some from
their perusal.

Grosvenor Gate:
May- Day, 1845.

(xiv)

I

SYBIL

OR

THE TWO NATIONS

CHAPTER I,
The Eve of the Derby.

'LL take the odds against Caravan.'
Mn ponies?'
*Done.'

And Lord Milford, a young
noble, entered in his book the bet
which he had just made with Mr.
Latour, a grey-headed member of the Jockey Club.

It was the eve of the Derby of 1837. In a vast
and golden saloon, that in its decorations would have
become, and in its splendour would not have dis-
graced, Versailles in the days of the grand monarch,
were assembled many whose hearts beat at the
thought of the morrow, and whose brains still la-
boured to control its fortunes to their advantage.

*They say that Caravan looks puffy,' lisped, in a
low voice, a young man lounging on the edge of a

14 B. D.— 1 ( 1 )

2 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

buhl table that had once belonged to a Mortemart,
and dangling a rich cane with affected indifference, in
order to conceal his anxiety from all, except the per-
son whom he addressed.

*They are taking seven to two against him freely
over the way,' was the reply. 'I believe it's all
right'

*Do you know 1 dreamed last night something
about Mango?' continued the gentleman with the
cane, and with a look of uneasy superstition.

His companion shook his head.

*Well,' continued the gentleman with the cane, *I
have no opinion of him. I betted Charles Egremont
the odds against Mango this morning; he goes with
us, you know. By-the-bye, who is our fourth?'

'I thought of Milford,' was the reply in an under
tone. * What say you ? '

* Milford is going with St. James and Punch
Hughes.'

* Well, let us come in to supper, and we shall see
some fellow we like.'

So saying, the companions, taking their course
through more than one chamber, entered an apart-
ment of less dimensions than the principal saloon, but
not less sumptuous in its general appearance. The
gleaming lustres poured a flood of soft yet brilliant
light over a plateau glittering with gold plate, and
fragrant with exotics embedded in vases of rare por-
celain. The seats on each side of the table were oc-
cupied by persons consuming, with a heedless air,
delicacies for which they had no appetite; while the
conversation in general consisted of flying phrases re-
ferring to the impending event of the great day that
had already dawned.

SYBIL

3

*Come from Lady St. Julians', Fitz?' said a youth
of tender years, whose fair visage was as downy
and as blooming as the peach from which, with a
languid air, he withdrew his lips to make this inquiry
of the gentleman with the cane.

'Yes; why were not you there?'

M never go anywhere,' replied the melancholy
Cupid, * everything bores me so.'

'Well, will you go to Epsom with us to-morrow,
Alfred.?' said Lord Fitz-Heron. M take Berners and
Charles Egremont, and with you our party will be
perfect.'

* I feel so cursed hlas^ I ' exclaimed the boy in a
tone of elegant anguish.

*It will give you a fillip, Alfred,' said Mr. Berners;
'do you all the good in the world.'

'Nothing can do me good,' said Alfred, throwing
away his almost untasted peach; 'I should be quite
content if anything could do me harm. Waiter, bring
me a tumbler of Badminton.'

'And bring me one too,' sighed out Lord Eugene
de Vere, who was a year older than Alfred Mount-
chesney, his companion and brother in listlessness.
Both had exhausted life in their teens, and all that
remained for them was to mourn, amid the ruins
of their reminiscences, over the extinction of excite-
ment.

'Well, Eugene, suppose you come with us,' said
Lord Fitz-Heron.

'I think 1 shall go down to Hampton Court and
play tennis,' said Lord Eugene. 'As it is the Derby,
nobody will be there.'

'And I will go with you, Eugene,' said Alfred
Mountchesney, 'and we will dine together afterwards

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

at the Toy. Anything is better than dining in this
infernal London.'

'Well, for my part,' said Mr. Berners, *I do not
like your suburban dinners. You always get some-
thing you can't eat, and cursed bad wine.'

M rather like bad wine,' said Mr. Mountchesney;
'one gets so bored with good wine.'

* Do you want the odds against Hybiscus, Berners ? '
said a guardsman, looking up from his book, which
he had been intently studying.

'All I want is some supper, and as you are not
using your place — '

'You shall have it. Oh! here's Milford, he will
bet me them.'

And at this moment entered the room the young
nobleman whom we have before mentioned, accom-
panied by an individual who was approaching per-
haps the termination of his fifth lustre, but whose
general air rather betokened even a less experienced
time of life. Tall, with a well-proportioned figure
and a graceful carriage, his countenance touched with a
sensibility that at once engages the affections, Charles
Egremont was not only admired by that sex whose
approval generally secures men enemies among their
fellows, but was at the same time the favourite of
his own.

'Ah, Egremont! come and sit here,' exclaimed
more than one banqueter.

' I saw you waltzing with the little Bertie, old fel-
low,' said Lord Fitz-Heron, 'and therefore did not stay
to speak to you, as I thought we should meet here.
I am to call for you, mind.'

'How shall we all feel this time to-morrow?' said
Egremont, smiling.

SYBIL

5

*The happiest fellow at this moment must be
Cockie Graves,' said Lord Milford. 'He can have no
suspense. I have been looking over his book, and I
defy him, whatever happens, not to lose.'

'Poor Cockie,' said Mr. Berners; 'he has asked
me to dine with him at the Clarendon on Satur-
day.'

'Cockie is a very good Cockie,' said Lord Milford,
'and Caravan is a very good horse; and if any gen-
tleman sportsman present wishes to give seven to
two, I will take him to any amount.*

'My book is made up,' said Egremont: 'and I
stand or fall by Caravan.*

'And L'

'And I.'

'And L'

'Well, mark my words,' said a fourth, rather
solemnly, 'Rat-trap wins.*

'There is not a horse except Caravan,' said Lord
Milford, 'fit for a borough stake.'

'You used to be all for Phosphorus, Egremont,*
said Lord Eugene de Vere.

' Yes ; but fortunately 1 have got out of that scrape.
I owe Phlop. Dormer a good turn for that. 1 was
the third man who knew he had gone lame.'

'And what are the odds against him now?'

'Oh! nominal; forty to one; what you please.'

'He won't run,' said Mr. Berners, 'John Day told
me he had refused to ride him.'

'I believe Cockie Graves might win something if
Phosphorus came in first,' said Lord Milford, laughing.

' How close it is to-night! ' said Egremont. * Waiter,
give me some seltzer water; and open another win-
dow; open them all.'

6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

At this moment an influx of guests intimated that
the assembly at Lady St. Julians' had broken up.
Many at the table rose and yielded their places, clus-
tering round the chimney-piece, or forming in various
groups, and discussing the great question. Several of
those who had recently entered were votaries of Rat-
trap, the favourite, and quite prepared, from all the
information that had reached them, to back their opin-
ions valiantly. The conversation had now become
general and animated, or rather there was a medley of
voices in which little was distinguished except the
names of horses and the amount of odds. In the
midst of all this, waiters glided about, handing in-
comprehensible mixtures bearing aristocratic names;
mystical combinations of French wines and German
waters, flavoured with slices of Portugal fruits, and
cooled with lumps of American ice, compositions
which immortalized the creative genius of some high
patrician name.

*By Jove! that's a flash!' exclaimed Lord Milford,
as a blaze of lightning seemed to suffuse the cham-
ber, and the beaming lustres turned white and ghastly
in the glare.

The thunder rolled over the building. There was a
dead silence. Was it going to rain? Was it going
to pour? Was the storm confined to the metropolis?
Would it reach Epsom? A deluge, and the course
would be a quagmire and strength might baffle speed.

Another flash, another explosion, the hissing noise
of rain. Lord Milford moved aside, and, jealous of
the eye of another, read a letter from Chifney, and in
a few minutes afterwards offered to take the odds
against Pocket Hercules. Mr. Latour walked to the
window, surveyed the heavens, sighed that there was

SYBIL

7

not time to send his tiger from the door to Epsom,
and get information whether the storm had reached the
Surrey hills, for to-night's operations. It was too late.
So he took a rusk and a glass of lemonade, and re-
tired to rest with a cool head and a cooler heart.

The storm raged, the incessant flash played as it
were round the burnished cornice of the chamber, and
threw a lurid hue on the scenes of Watteau and
Boucher that sparkled in the medallions over the lofty
doors. The thunderbolts seemed to descend in clat-
tering confusion upon the roof. Sometimes there was
a moment of dead silence, broken only by the patter-
ing of the rain in the street without, or the pattering
of the dice in a chamber at hand. Then horses were
backed, bets made, and there were loud and frequent
calls for brimming goblets from hurrying waiters, dis-
tracted by the lightning and deafened by the peal. It
seemed a scene and a supper where the marble guest
of Juan might have been expected; and, had he ar-
rived, he would have found probably hearts as bold
and spirits as reckless as he encountered in Andalusia.

CHAPTER 11.

Phosphorus Wins!

ILL any one do anything about
Hybiscus?' sang out a gentleman in
the ring at Epsom. It was full of
eager groups; round the betting
post a swarming cluster, while the
magic circle itself was surrounded by
a host of horsemen shouting from their saddles the odds
they were ready to receive or give, and the names of
the horses they were prepared to back or to oppose.
'Will any one do anything about Hybiscus?'
'I'll bet you five to one,' said a tall, stiff Saxon
peer, in a white great-coat.
'No; I'll take six.'

The tall, stiff peer in the white great-coat mused
for a moment with his pencil at his lip, and then said,
'Well, I'll bet you six. What do you say about
Mango ?'

'Eleven to two against Mango,' called out a little
hump-backed man in a shrill voice, but with the air
of one who was master of his work.

' I should like to do a little business with you, Mr.
Chippendale, said Lord Milford, in a coaxing tone,
'but I must have six to one.'
(8)

SYBIL

9

'Eleven to two, and no mistake,' said this keeper
of a second-rate gaming-house, who, known by the
flattering appellation of Hump Chippendale, now turned
with malignant abruptness from the heir-apparent of
an English earldom.

'You shall have six to one, my lord,' said Cap-
tain Spruce, a debonair personage, with a well-turned
silk hat arranged a little aside, his coloured cravat tied
with precision, his whiskers trimmed like a quickset
hedge. Spruce, who had earned his title of Captain
on the plains of Newmarket, which had witnessed for
many a year his successful exploits, had a weakness
for the aristocracy, who, knowing his graceful in-
firmity, patronized him with condescending dexterity,
acknowledged his existence in Pail-Mall as well as at
Tattersall's, and thus occasionally got a point more
than the betting out of him. Hump Chippendale had
none of these gentle failings; he was a democratic
leg, who loved to fleece a noble, and thought all men
were born equal; a consoling creed that was a hedge
for his hump.

'Seven to four against the favourite; seven to two
against Caravan; eleven to two against Mango. What
about Benedict? Will any one do anything about
Pocket Hercules? Thirty to one against Dardanelles.'

'Done.'

' Five-and-thirty ponies to one against Phosphorus,'
shouted a little man vociferously and repeatedly.

'I will bet forty,' said Lord Milford. No answer;
nothing done.

'Forty to one!' murmured Egremont, who stood
against Phosphorus. A little nervous, he said to the
peer in the white great-coat, 'Don't you think that
Phosphorus may, after all, have some chance?'

lo BENJAMIN DISRAELI

M should be cursed sorry to be deep against him,'
said the peer.

Egremont with a quivering lip walked away. He
consulted his book; he meditated anxiously. Should
he hedge.?* It was scarcely worth while to mar
the symmetry of his winnings; he stood 'so well*
by all the favourites; and for a horse at forty to
one. No; he would trust his star, he would not
hedge.

'Mr. Chippendale,' whispered the peer in the white
great-coat, 'go and press Mr. Egremont about Phos-
phorus. I should not be surprised if you got a good
thing.'

At this moment, a huge, broad-faced, rosy-gilled
fellow, with one of those good-humoured yet cunning
countenances that we meet occasionally north of the
Trent, rode up to the ring on a square cob, and, dis-
mounting, entered the circle. He was a carcase-
butcher famous in Carnaby-market, and the prime
counsellor of a distinguished nobleman, for whom
privately he betted on commission. His secret service
to-day was to bet against his noble employer's own
horse, and so he at once sung out, 'Twenty to one
against Man-trap.'

A young gentleman just launched into the world,
and who, proud of his ancient and spreading acres,
was now making his first book, seeing Man-trap
marked eighteen to one on the cards, jumped eagerly
at this bargain, while Lord Fitz-Heron and Mr. Ber-
ners, who were at hand, and who in their days had
found their names in the book of the carcase-butcher,
and grown wise by it, interchanged a smile.

'Mr. Egremont will not take,' said Hump Chip-
pendale to the peer in the white great-coat.

SYBIL

'You must have been too eager,' said his noble
friend.

The ring is up; the last odds declared; all gallop
away to the Warren. A few minutes, only a few
minutes, and the event that for twelve months has
been the pivot of so much calculation, of such subtle
combinations, of such deep conspiracies,, round which
the thought and passion of the sporting world have
hung like eagles, will be recorded in the fleeting
tablets of the past. But what minutes! Count them
by sensation, and not by calendars, and each mo-
ment is a day and the race a life. Hogarth, in a
coarse and yet animated sketch, has painted ' Before '
and 'After.' A creative spirit of a higher vein might
develop the simpHcity of the idea with subHmer ac-
cessories. Pompeius before Pharsalia, Harold before
Hastings, Napoleon before Waterloo, might afford
some striking contrasts to the immediate catastrophe
of their fortunes. Finer still, the inspired mariner
who has just discovered a new world; the sage who
has revealed a new planet; and yet the 'Before' and
'After' of a first-rate English race, in the degree of
its excitement, and sometimes in the tragic emotions
of its close, may vie even with these.

They are saddhng the horses; Caravan looks in
great condition; and a scornful smile seems to play
upon the handsome features of Pavis, as, in the be-
coming colours of his employer, he gracefully gallops
his horse before his admiring supporters. Egremont,
in the delight of an English patrician, scarcely saw
Mango, and never even thought of Phosphorus; Phos-
phorus, who, by-the-bye, was the first horse that
showed, with both his forelegs bandaged.

They are off!

12 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

As soon as they are well away, Chifney makes the
running with Pocket Hercules. Up to the Rubbing
House he is leading; this is the only point the eye
can select. Higher up the hill, Caravan, Hybiscus,
Benedict, Mahometan, Phosphorus, Michel Fell, and
Rat-trap are with the grey, forming a front rank, and
at the new ground the pace has told its tale, for half
a dozen are already out of the race.

The summit is gained; the tactics alter: here Pavis
brings up Caravan, with extraordinary severity; the
pace round Tattenham corner terrific; Caravan lead-
ing, then Phosphorus a little above him, Mahometan
next, Hybiscus fourth. Rat-trap looking badly, Wis-
dom, Benedict, and another handy. By this time
Pocket Hercules has enough, and at the road the tail-
ing grows at every stride. Here the favourite himself
is hors de combat, as well as Dardanelles, and a
crowd of lesser celebrities.

There are now but four left in the race, and of
these, two, Hybiscus and Mahometan, are some lengths
behind. Now it is neck and neck between Caravan
and Phosphorus. At the stand, Caravan has decidedly
the best; but just at the post, Edwards, on Phos-
phorus, lifts the gallant little horse, and with an ex-
traordinary effort contrives to shove him in by half a
length.

*You look a little low, Charley,* said Lord Fitz-
Heron, as taking their lunch in their drag, he poured
the champagne into the glass of Egremont.

* By Jove! ' said Lord Milford, 'only think of Cockie
Graves having gone and done it!'

CHAPTER III.

The House of Egremont.

GREMONT was the younger brother
of an EngHsh earl, whose nobility,
being of nearly three centuries'
date, ranked him among our high
and ancient peers, although its
origin was more memorable than
illustrious. The founder of the family had been a
confidential domestic of one of the favourites of
Henry Vlll., and had contrived to be appointed one
of the commissioners for 'visiting and taking the
surrenders of divers religious houses.' It came to pass
that divers of these religious houses surrendered them-
selves eventually to the use and benefit of honest
Baldwin Greymount. The king was touched with
the activity and zeal of his commissioner. Not one
of them whose reports were so ample and satisfactory,
who could baffle a wily prior with more dexterity,
or control a proud abbot with more firmness. Nor
were they well-digested reports alone that were trans-
mitted to the Sovereign: they came accompanied with
many rare and curious articles, grateful to the taste
of one who was not only a religious reformer but a
dilettante; golden candlesticks and costly chalices;

(13)

14 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

sometimes a jewelled pyx; fantastic spoons and pat-
ens, rings for the fingers and the ear; occasionally a
fair-written and blazoned manuscript: suitable offering
to the royal scholar. Greymount was noticed; sent
for; promoted in the household; knighted; might
doubtless have been sworn of the council, and in due
time have become a minister; but his was a discreet
ambition, of an accumulative rather than an aspiring
character. He served the king faithfully in all domes-
tic matters that required an unimpassioned, unscru-
pulous agent; fashioned his creed and conscience
according to the royal model in all its freaks; seized
the right moment to get sundry grants of abbey
lands, and contrived in that dangerous age to save
both his head and his estate.

The Greymount family having planted themselves
in the land, faithful to the policy of the founder,
avoided the public gaze during the troubled period
that followed the reformation; and even during the
more orderly reign of Elizabeth, rather sought their
increase in alliances than in court favour. But at the
commencement of the seventeenth century, their ab-
bey lands infinitely advanced in value, and their rental
swollen by the prudent accumulation of more than
seventy years, a Greymount, who was then a county
member, was elevated to the peerage as Baron Mar-
ney. The heralds furnished his pedigree, and assured
the world that, although the exalted rank and exten-
sive possessions enjoyed at present by the Greymounts
had their origin immediately in great territorial revo-
lutions of a recent reign, it was not for a moment
to be supposed that the remote ancestors of the Ec-
clesiastical Commissioner of 1530 were by any means
obscure. On the contrary^ it appeared that they were

SYBIL

15

both Norman and baronial, their real name Egremont,
which, in their patent of peerage, the family now re-
sumed.

In the civil wars the Egremonts, pricked by their
Norman blood, were cavaliers, and fought pretty well.
But in 1688, alarmed at the prevalent impression that
King James intended to insist on the restitution of
the Church estates to their original purposes, to wit,
the education of the people and the maintenance of
the poor, the Lord of Marney Abbey became a warm
adherent of 'civil and religious liberty,' the cause for
which Hampden had died in the field, and Russell on
the scaffold, and joined the other Whig lords, and
great lay impropriators, in calling over the Prince of
Orange and a Dutch army, to vindicate those popular
principles which, somehow or other, the people would
never support. Profiting by this last pregnant cir-
cumstance, the lay abbot of Marney, also in this in-
stance like the other Whig lords, was careful to
maintain, while he vindicated the cause of civil and
religious liberty, a loyal and dutiful though secret
correspondence with the court of St. Germains.

The great deliverer. King William 111., to whom Lord
Marney was a systematic traitor, made the descendant
of the Ecclesiastical Commissioner of Henry VIII. an
EngHsh earl; and from that time until the period of
our history, though the Marney family had never
produced one individual eminent for civil or miUtary
abilities, though the country was not indebted to them
for a single statesman, orator, successful warrior, great
lawyer, learned divine, eminent author, illustrious
man of science, they had contrived, if not to engross
any great share of public admiration and love, at least
to monopolise no contemptible portion of public

i6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

money and public dignities. During the seventy
years of almost unbroken Whig rule, from the acces-
sion of the House of Hanover to the fall of Mr. Fox,
Marney Abbey had furnished a never-failing crop of
lord privy seals, lord presidents, and lord lieutenants.
The family had had their due quota of garters and
governments and bishoprics; admirals without fleets,
and generals who fought only in America. They had
glittered in great embassies with clever secretaries at
their elbow, and had once governed Ireland, when to
govern Ireland was only to apportion the public
plunder to a corrupt senate.

Notwithstanding, however, this prolonged enjoy-
ment of undeserved prosperity, the lay abbots of
Marney were not content. Not that it was satiety
which induced dissatisfaction. The Egremonts could
feed on. They wanted something more. Not to be
prime ministers or secretaries of state, for they were a
shrewd race who knew the length of their tether,
and notwithstanding the encouraging example of his
Grace of Newcastle, they could not resist the per-
suasion that some knowledge of the interests and
resources of nations, some power of expressing opin-
ions with propriety, some degree of respect for the
public and for himself, were not altogether indis-
pensable qualifications even under a Venetian consti-
tution, in an individual who aspired to a post so
eminent and responsible. Satisfied with the stars and
mitres, and official seals, which were periodically
apportioned to them, the Marney family did not
aspire to the somewhat graceless office of being their
distributor. What they aimed at was promotion in
their order; and promotion to the highest class. They
observed that more than one of the other great 'civil

SYBIL

17

and religious liberty' families, the families who in one
century plundered the Church to gain the property of
the people and in another century changed the dy-
nasty to gain the power of the crown, had their
brows circled with the strawberry leaf. And why
should not this distinction be the high lot also of the
descendants of the old gentleman-usher of one of
King Henry's plundering vicar-generals? Why not?
True it is, that a grateful sovereign in our days has
deemed such distinction the only reward for half a
hundred victories. True it is, that Nelson, after con-
quering the Mediterranean, died only a viscount! But
the house of Marney had risen to high rank, counted
themselves ancient nobility; and turned up their noses
at the Pratts and the Smiths, the Jenkinsons and the
Robinsons of our degenerate days; and never had
done anything for the nation or for their honours.
And why should they now? It was unreasonable to
expect it. Civil and religious liberty, that had given
them a broad estate and glittering coronet, to say
nothing of half-a-dozen close seats in Parliament, ought
clearly to make them dukes.

But the other great Whig families who had ob-
tained this honour, and who had done something
more for it than spoliate their Church and betray their
king, set up their backs against this claim of the
Egremonts. The Egremonts had done none of the
work of the last hundred years of political mystifica-
tion, during which a people without power or educa-
tion had been induced to believe themselves the
freest and most enlightened nation in the world, and
had submitted to lavish their blood and treasure, to
see their industry crippled and their labour mortgaged,
in order to maintain an oligarchy that had neither

14 B. D.— 3

1 8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

ancient memories to soften nor present services to
justify their unprecedented usurpation.

How had the Egremonts contributed to this
prodigious result? Their family had furnished none
of those artful orators whose bewildering phrase had
fascinated the public intelligence; none of those toil-
some patricians whose assiduity in affairs had con-
vinced their unprivileged fellow-subjects that govern-
ment was a science, and administration an art, which
demanded the devotion of a peculiar class in the
state for their fulfilment and pursuit. The Egremonts
had never said anything that was remembered, or
done anything that could be recalled. It was decided
by the Great Revolution families that they should
not be dukes. Infinite was the indignation of the lay
abbot of Marney. He counted his boroughs, consulted
his cousins, and muttered revenge. The opportunity
soon offered for the gratification of his passion.

The situation of the Venetian party in the wane
of the eighteenth century had become extremely critical.
A young king was making often fruitless, but always
energetic, struggles to emancipate his national royalty
from the trammels of the factious dogeship. More
than sixty years of a government of singular corrup-
tion had alienated all hearts from the oligarchy; never
indeed much affected by the great body of the people.
It could no longer be concealed that, by virtue of a
plausible phrase, power had been transferred from the
crown to a parliament, the members of which were
appointed by a limited and exclusive class, who
owned no responsibility to the country, who de-
bated and voted in secret, and who were regularly
paid by the small knot of great families that by this
machinery had secured the permanent possession of

SYBIL

19

the king's treasury. Whiggism was putrescent in
the nostrils of the nation; we were probably on the
eve of a bloodless yet important revolution; when
Rockingham, a virtuous magnifico, alarmed and dis-
gusted, resolved to revive something of the pristine
purity and high-toned energy of the old Whig con-
nection, appealed to his * new generation ' from a de-
generate age, arrayed under his banner the generous
youth of the Whig families, and was fortunate to en-
list in the service the supreme genius of Edmund
Burke.

Burke effected for the Whigs what Bolingbroke in
a preceding age had done for the Tories: he restored
the moral existence of the party. He taught them to
recur to the ancient principles of their connection, and
suffused those principles with all the delusive splendour
of his imagination. He raised the tone of their public
discourse; he breathed a high spirit into their public
acts. It was in his power to do more for the Whigs
than St. John could do for his party. The oligarchy,
who had found it convenient to attaint Bolingbroke
for being the avowed minister of the English Prince
with whom they were always in secret communica-
tion, when opinion forced them to consent to his
restitution, had tacked to the amnesty a clause as
cowardly as it was unconstitutional, and declared
his incompetence to sit in the parliament of his
country. Burke, on the contrary, fought the Whig
fight with a two-edged weapon: he was a great
writer; as an orator he was transcendent. In a dearth
of that public talent for the possession of which the
Whigs have generally been distinguished. Burke came
forward and established them alike in the parliament
and the country. And what was his reward ? No

20 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

sooner had a young and dissolute noble, who, with
some of the aspirations of a Caesar, oftener realised
the conduct of a Catiline, appeared on the stage, and
after some inglorious tergiversation adopted their
colours, than they transferred to him the command
which had been won by wisdom and genius, vindi-
cated by unrivalled knowledge, and adorned by ac-
complished eloquence. When the hour arrived for the
triumph which he had prepared, he was not even
admitted into the Cabinet," virtually presided over
by his graceless pupil, who, in the profuse sugges-
tions of his teeming converse, had found the prin-
ciples and the information which were among the
chief claims to public confidence of Mr. Fox.

Hard necessity made Mr. Burke submit to the yoke,
but the humiliation could never be forgotten. Neme-
sis favours genius; the inevitable hour at length ar-
rived. A voice like the Apocalypse sounded over
England, and even echoed in all the courts of Europe.
Burke poured forth the vials of his hoarded vengeance
into the agitated heart of Christendom; he stimulated
the panic of a world by the wild pictures of his in-
spired imagination; he dashed to the ground the rival
who had robbed him of his hard-earned greatness;
rent in twain the proud oligarchy that had dared to
use and to insult him; and, followed with servility by
the haughtiest and the most timid of its members, amid
the frantic exultation of his country, he placed his heel
upon the neck of the ancient serpent.

Among the Whig followers of Mr. Burke in this
memorable defection, among the Devonshires and the
Portlands, the Spencers and the Fitzwilliams, was the
Earl of Marney, whom the Whigs would not make a
duke.

SYBIL

21

What was his chance of success from Mr. Pitt?

If the history of England be ever written by one
who has the knowledge and the courage, and both
qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking, the
world would be more astonished than when reading
the Roman annals by Niebuhr. Generally speaking,
all the great events have been distorted, most of the
important causes concealed, some of the principal
characters never appear, and all who figure are so
misunderstood and misrepresented, that the result is
a complete mystification, and the perusal of the nar-
rative about as profitable to an Englishman as reading
the Republic of Plato or the Utopia of More, the pages
of Gaudentio di Lucca or the adventures of Peter
Wilkins.

The influence of races in our early ages, of the
Church in our middle, and of parties in our modern
history, are three great moving and modifying pow-
ers, that must be pursued and analysed with an un-
tiring, profound, and unimpassioned spirit, before a
guiding ray can be secured. A remarkable feature of
our written history is the absence in its pages of some
of the most influential personages. Not one man in
a thousand, for instance, has ever heard of Major
Wildman: yet he was the soul of English politics in
the most eventful period of this kingdom, and one
most interesting to this age, from 1640 to 1688; and
seemed more than once to hold the balance which
was to decide the permanent forms of our govern-
ment. But he was the leader of an unsuccessful party.
Even, comparatively speaking, in our own times, the
same mysterious oblivion is sometimes encouraged to
creep over personages of great social distinction as
well as poHtical importance.

22 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

The name of the second Pitt remains, fresh after
forty years of great events, a parliamentary beacon.
He was the Chatterton of politics ; the ' marvellous
boy.' Some have a vague impression that he was
mysteriously moulded by his great father; that he in-
herited the genius, the eloquence, the statecraft of
Chatham. His genius was of a different bent, his elo-
quence of a different class, his statecraft of a different
school. To understand Mr. Pitt, one must understand
one of the suppressed characters of English history,
and that is Lord Shelburne.

When the fine genius of the injured Bolingbroke,
the only peer of his period who was educated, and
proscribed by the oligarchy because they were afraid
of his eloquence, 'the glory of his order and the
shame,' shut out from Parhament, found vent in those
writings which recalled to the English people the in-
herent blessings of their old free monarchy, and
painted in immortal hues his picture of a patriot king,
the spirit that he raised at length touched the heart
of Carteret, born a Whig, yet sceptical of the ad-
vantages of that patrician constitution which made
the Duke of Newcastle, the most incompetent of men,
but the chosen leader of the Venetian party, virtually
Sovereign of England. Lord Carteret had many bril-
liant qualities: he was undaunted, enterprising, elo-
quent; had considerable knowledge of continental
politics, was a great linguist, a master of public law;
and though he failed in his premature effort to termi-
nate the dogeship of George II., he succeeded in
maintaining a considerable though secondary position
in public life. The young Shelburne married his
daughter. Of him it is singular we know less than
of his father-in-law, yet from the scattered traits some

SYBIL

23

idea may be formed of the ablest and most accom-
plished minister of the eighteenth century. Lord Shel-
burne, influenced probably by the example and the
traditionary precepts of his eminent father-in-law, ap-
pears early to have held himself aloof from the patrician
connection, and entered public life as the follower of
Bute in the first great effort of George III. to rescue
the sovereignty from what Lord Chatham called 'the
Great Revolution families.' He became in time a
member of Lord Chatham's last administration; one of
the strangest and most unsuccessful efforts to aid the
grandson of George II. in his struggle for political
emancipation. Lord Shelburne adopted from the first
the Bolingbroke system; a real royalty, in lieu of the
chief magistracy; a permanent alliance with France,
instead of the Whig scheme of viewing in that power
the natural enemy of England; and, above all, a plan
of commercial freedom, the germ of which may be
found in the long-maligned negotiations of Utrecht,
but which, in the instance of Lord Shelburne, were
soon in time matured by all the economical science of
Europe, in which he was a proficient. Lord Shel-
burne seems to have been of a reserved and some-
what astute disposition: deep and adroit, he was
however brave and firm. His knowledge was exten-
sive and even profound. He was a great linguist; he
pursued both literary and scientific investigations; his
house was frequented by men of letters, especially
those distinguished by their political abilities or eco-
nomical attainments. He maintained the most exten-
sive private correspondence of any public man of his
time. The earliest and most authentic information
reached him from all courts and quarters of Europe;
and it was a common phrase that the minister of the

24 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

day sent to him often for the important information
which the cabinet could not itself command. Lord
Shelburne was the first great minister who compre-
hended the rising importance of the middle class, and
foresaw in its future power a bulwark for the throne
against 'the Great Revolution families/ Of his quali-
ties in council we have no record; there is reason
to believe that his administrative ability was con-
spicuous; his speeches prove that, if not supreme, he
was eminent, in the art of parliamentary disputation,
while they show on all the questions discussed a
richness and variety of information, with which the
speeches of no statesman of that age except Mr. Burke
can compare.

Such was the man selected by George 111. as his
champion against the Venetian party, after the termi-
nation of the American war. The prosecution of that
war they had violently opposed, though it had origi-
nated in their own policy. First minister in the
House of Lords, Shelburne entrusted the lead in the
House of Commons to his Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, the youthful Pitt. The administration was
brief, but it was not inglorious. It obtained peace,
and, for the first time since the Revolution, intro-
duced into modern debate the legitimate principles on
which commerce should be conducted. It fell before
the famous Coalition with which 'the Great Revolu-
tion families' commenced their fiercest and their last
contention for the patrician government of royal Eng-
land.

In the heat of that great strife, the king, in the
second hazardous exercise of his prerogative, en-
trusted the perilous command to Pitt. Why Lord
Shelburne on that occasion was set aside, will per-

SYBIL

haps always remain a mysterious passage of our
political history, nor have we space on the present
occasion to attempt to penetrate its motives. Per-
haps the monarch, with a sense of the rising sym-
pathies of his people, was prescient of the magic
power of youth in touching the heart of a nation.
Yet it would not be an unprofitable speculation, if for
a moment we pause to consider what might have
been the consequences to our country if Mr. Pitt had
been content for a season again to lead the Commons
under Lord Shelburne, and to have secured for Eng-
land the unrivalled knowledge and dexterity of that
statesman in the conduct of our affairs during the
confounding fortunes of the French revolution. Lord
Shelburne was the only English minister competent
to the place: he was the only public man who had
the previous knowledge requisite to form accurate
conclusions on such a conjuncture; his remaining
speeches on the subject attest the amplitude of his
knowledge and the accuracy of his views; and in the
rout of Jena, or the agony of Austerlitz, one cannot
refrain from picturing the shade of Shelburne haunt-
ing the cabinet of Pitt, as the ghost of Canning is
said occasionally to linger about the Speaker's chair,
and smile sarcastically on the conscientious mediocri-
ties who pilfered his hard-earned honours.

But, during the happier years of Mr. Pitt, the in-
fluence of the mind of Shelburne may be traced
throughout his policy. It was Lansdowne House that
made Pitt acquainted with Dr. Price, a dissenting
minister, whom Lord Shelburne, when at the head of
affairs, courageously offered to make his private
secretary, and who furnished Mr. Pitt, among other
important suggestions, with his original plan of the

26 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

sinking fund. The commercial treaties of '87 were
struck in the same mint, and are notable as the first
effort made by the English government to emancipate
the country from the restrictive policy which had
been introduced by the 'glorious revolution;' memo-
rable epoch, that presented England at the same time
with a corn-law and a public debt. But on no sub-
ject was the magnetic influence of the descendant of
Sir William Petty more decided, than in the resolu-
tion of his pupil to curb the power of the patrician
party by an infusion from the middle classes into the
government of the country. Hence the origin of Mr.
Pitt's famous and long-misconceived plans of parlia-
mentary reform. Was he sincere, is often asked by
those who neither seek to discover the causes, nor
are capable of calculating the effects of public trans-
actions. Sincere! Why, he was struggling for his
existence! And when, baffled, first by the Venetian
party, and afterwards by the panic of Jacobinism, he
was forced to forego his direct purpose, he still en-
deavoured partially to effect it by a circuitous process.
He created a plebeian aristocracy and blended it with
the patrician oligarchy. He made peers of second-
rate squires and fat graziers. He caught them in the
alleys of Lombard Street, and clutched them from the
counting-houses of Cornhill. When Mr. Pitt, in an
age of Bank restriction, declared that every man with
an estate of ten thousand a year had a right to be a
peer, he sounded the knell of 'the cause for which
Hampden had died on the field, and Sidney on the
scaffold.'

In ordinary times the pupil of Shelburne would
have raised this country to a state of great material
prosperity, and removed or avoided many of those

SYBIL

27

anomalies which now perplex us; but he was not
destined for ordinary times; and, though his capacity
was vast and his spirit lofty, he had not that passion-
ate and creative genius required by an age of revolu-
tion. The French outbreak was his evil daemon: he
had not the means of calculating its effects upon
Europe. He had but a meagre knowledge himself of
continental politics: he was assisted by an inefficient
diplomacy. His mind was lost in a convulsion of
which he neither could comprehend the causes nor
calculate the consequences; and, forced to act, he
acted not only violently, but in exact opposition to
the very system he was called into political existence
to combat; he appealed to the fears, the prejudices,
and the passions of a privileged class, revived the old
policy of the oligarchy he had extinguished, and
plunged into all the ruinous excesses of French war
and Dutch finance.

If it be a salutary principle in the investigation of
historical transactions, to be careful in discriminating
the cause from the pretext, there is scarcely any in-
stance in which the application of this principle is
more fertile in results, than in that of the Dutch in-
vasion of 1688. The real cause of this invasion was
financial. The Prince of Orange had found that the
resources of Holland, however considerable, were in-
adequate to sustain him in his internecine rivalry
with the great Sovereign of France. In an authentic
conversation which has descended to us, held by
William at The Hague with one of the prime abettors
of the invasion, the prince did not disguise his mo-
tives; he said, 'Nothing but such a constitution as
you have in England can have the credit that Is nec-
essary to raise such sums as a great war requires.'

28 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

The prince came, and used our constitution for his
purpose: he introduced into England the system of
Dutch finance. The principle of that system was to
mortgage industry in order to protect property: ab-
stractedly, nothing can be conceived more unjust; its
practice in England has been equally injurious. In
Holland, with a small population engaged in the
same pursuits, in fact, a nation of bankers, the sys-
tem was adapted to the circumstances which had
created it. All shared in the present spoil, and there-
fore could endure the future burthen. And so to
this day Holland is sustained, almost solely sustained,
by the vast capital thus created which still lingers
among its dykes. But applied to a country in which
the circumstances were entirely different, to a con-
siderable and rapidly-increasing population, where
there was a numerous peasantry, a trading middle
class struggling into existence, the system of Dutch
finance, pursued more or less for nearly a century
and a half, has ended in the degradation of a fet-
tered and burthened multitude. Nor have the de-
moralising consequences of the funding system on
the more favoured classes been less decided. It has
made debt a national habit; it has made credit the
ruling power, not the exceptional auxiliary, of all
transactions; it has introduced a loose, inexact, hap-
hazard, and dishonest spirit in the conduct of both
public and private life; a spirit dazzling and yet das-
tardly; reckless of consequences and yet shrinking
from responsibility. And in the end, it has so over-
stimulated the energies of the population to maintain
the material engagements of the state, and of society
at large, that the moral condition of the people has
been entirely lost sight of.

SYBIL

29

A mortgaged aristocracy, a gambling foreign com-
merce, a home trade founded on a morbid competi-
tion, and a degraded people; these are great evils,
but ought perhaps cheerfully to be encountered for
the greater blessings of civil and religious liberty.
Yet the first v^ould seem in some degree to depend
upon our Saxon mode of trial by our peers, upon the
stipulations of the great Norman charters, upon the
practice and the statute of Habeas Corpus, a principle
native to our common law, but established by the
Stuarts. Not in a careful perusal of the Bill of Rights,
or in an impartial scrutiny of the subsequent legisla-
tion of those times, though some diminution of our
political franchises must be confessed, is it easy to
discover any increase of our civil privileges. To
those, indeed, who believe that the English nation (at
all times a religious and Catholic people, but who even
in the days of the Plantagenets were anti-papal) were
in any danger of again falling under the yoke of the
Pope of Rome in the reign of James II., religious
liberty was perhaps acceptable, though it took the
shape of a discipline which at once anathematised a
great portion of the nation, and, virtually establishing
Puritanism in Ireland, laid the foundation of those
mischiefs which are now endangering the empire.

That the last of the Stuarts had any other object
in his impolitic manoeuvres than an impracticable
scheme to blend the two Churches, there is now
authority to disbelieve. He certainly was guilty of
the offence of sending an envoy openly to Rome,
who, by-the-bye, was received by the Pope with
great discourtesy; and her Majesty Queen Victoria,
whose Protestantism cannot be doubted, for it is one
of her chief titles to our homage, has at this time a

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

secret envoy at the same court; and that is the differ-
ence between them: both ministers doubtless working,
however fruitlessly, for the same object, the termination
of those terrible misconceptions, political and religious,
that have occasioned so many martyrdoms, and so
many crimes alike to sovereigns and to subjects.

If James II. had really attempted to re-establish
Popery in this country, the English people, who had
no hand in his overthrow, would doubtless soon
have stirred and secured their * Catholic and Apostolic
Church,' independent of any foreign dictation; the
Church to which they still regularly profess their ad-
herence; and being a practical people, it is possible
that they might have achieved their object and yet
retained their native princes; under which circum-
stances we might have been saved from the triple
blessings of Venetian politics, Dutch finance, and
French wars: against which, in their happiest days,
and with their happiest powers, struggled the three
greatest of English statesmen, Bolingbroke, Shelburne,
and, lastly, the son of Chatham.

We have endeavoured in another work, not we hope
without something of the impartiality of the future,
to sketch the character and career of his successors.
From his death to 1825, the political history of Eng-
land is a history of great events and little men. The
rise of Mr. Canning, long kept down by the plebeian
aristocracy of Mr. Pitt as an adventurer, had shaken
parties to their centre. His rapid disappearance from
the scene left both Whigs and Tories in a state of
disorganisation. The distinctive principles of these
connections were now difficult to trace. That period
of public languor which intervenes between the break-
ing up of parties and the formation of factions now

SYBIL

31

succeeded in England. An exhausted sensualist on
the throne, who only demanded from his ministers
repose, a voluptuous aristocracy, and a listless people,
were content, in the absence of all public conviction
and national passion, to consign the government of
the country to a great man, whose decision relieved
the Sovereign, whose prejudices pleased the nobles,
and whose achievements dazzled the multitude.

The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of
first minister immortal fame; a quality of success
which would almost seem to include all others. His
public knowledge was such as might be expected
from one whose conduct already formed an important
portion of the history of his country. He had a per-
sonal and intimate acquaintance with the sovereigns
and chief statesmen of Europe, a kind of information
in which EngUsh ministers have generally been de-
ficient, but without which the management of our
external affairs must at the best be haphazard. He
possessed administrative talents of the highest or-
der.

The tone of the age, the temper of the country,
the great qualities and the high character of the min-
ister, indicated a long and prosperous administration.
The only individual in his cabinet who, from a
combination of circumstances rather than from any
intellectual supremacy over his colleagues, was com-
petent to be his rival, was content to be his successor.
In his most aspiring moments, Mr. Peel, in all
probability, aimed at no higher reach; and with youth
and the leadership of the House of Commons, one
has no reason to be surprised at his moderation. The
conviction that the duke's government would only
cease with the termination of his public career was

32 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

so general, that, the moment he was installed in
office, the Whigs smiled on him; political conciliation
became the slang of the day, and the fusion of parties
the babble of clubs and the tattle of boudoirs.

How comes it, then, that so great a man, in so
great a position, should have so signally failed; should
have broken up his government, wrecked his party,
and so completely annihilated his political position,
that, even with his historical reputation to sustain
him, he can since only re-appear in the councils of
his Sovereign in a subordinate, not to say equivocal,
character ?

With all those great qualities which will secure
him a place in our history not perhaps inferior even
to Marlborough, the Duke of Wellington has one de-
ficiency which has been the stumbling-block of his
civil career. Bishop Burnet, in speculating on the
extraordinary influence of Lord Shaftesbury, and ac-
counting how a statesman so inconsistent in his con-
duct and so false to his confederates should have so
powerfully controlled his country, observes, ' His

STRENGTH LAY IN HIS KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLAND.'

Now that is exactly the kind of knowledge which
the Duke of Wellington never possessed.

When the king, finding that in Lord Goderich he
had a minister who, instead of deciding, asked his
royal master for advice, sent for the Duke of Welling-
ton to undertake the government, a change in the
carriage of his Grace was perceived by some who had
the opportunity to form an opinion on such a subject.
If one might venture to use such a word in reference
to such a man, we might remark, that the duke had
been somewhat daunted by the selection of Mr. Can-
ning. It disappointed great hopes, it baffled great

SYBIL

33

plans, and dispelled for a season the conviction that,
it is believed, had been long maturing in his Grace's
mind; that he was the man of the age, that his mili-
tary career had been only a preparation for a civil
course not less illustrious; and that it was reserved
for him to control for the rest of his life, undisputed,
the destinies of a country which was indebted to him
in no slight degree for its European pre-eminence.
The death of Mr. Canning revived, the rout of Lord
Goderich restored, these views.

Napoleon, at St. Helena, speculating in conversa-
tion on the future career of his conqueror, asked,
*What will Wellington do? After all he has done,
he will not be content to be quiet. He will change
the dynasty.'

Had the great exile been better acquainted with the
real character of our Venetian constitution, he would
have known that to govern England in 1820, it was
not necessary to change its dynasty. But the Em-
peror, though wrong in surmise, was right in the
main. It was clear that the energies which had twice
entered Paris as a conqueror and had made kings and
mediatised princes at Vienna, would not be content
to subside into ermined insignificance. The duke
commenced his political tactics early. The cabinet of
Lord Liverpool, especially during its latter term, was
the hot-bed of many intrigues; but the obstacles were
numerous, though the appointing fate, in which his
Grace believed, removed them. The disappearance of
Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning from the scene was
alike unexpected. The Duke of Wellington was at
length prime minister, and no individual ever occupied
that post more conscious of its power, and more de-
termined to exercise it.

14 B. D.— 3

34 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

This is not the occasion on which we shall at-
tempt to do justice to a theme so instructive as the
administration of his Grace. Treated with impartiality
and sufficient information, it would be an invaluable
contribution to the stores of our political knowledge
and national experience. Throughout its brief but ec-
centric and tumultuous annals we see continual proof,
how important is that knowledge 'in which lay Lord
Shaftesbury's strength.' In twenty-four months we
find an aristocracy estranged, without a people being
conciliated; while on two several occasions, first, the
prejudices, and then the pretensions of the middle
class, were alike treated with contumely. The public
was astonished at hearing of statesmen of long parlia-
mentary fame, men round whom the intelligence of
the nation had gathered for years, if not with confi-
dence, at least with interest, being expelled from the
cabinet in a manner not unworthy of Colonel Joyce,
while their places were filled by second-rate soldiers,
whose very names were unknown to the great body
of the people, and who, under no circumstances,
should have aspired beyond the government of a
colony. This administration, which commenced in
arrogance, ended in panic. There was an interval of
perplexity, when occurred the most ludicrous instance
extant of an attempt at coalition; subordinates were
promoted while negotiations were still pending with
their chiefs; and these negotiations, undertaken so
crudely, were terminated in pique, in a manner which
added to political disappointment personal offence.
When even his parasites began to look gloomy, the
duke had a specific that was to restore all, and hav-
ing allowed every element of power to escape his
grasp, he believed he could balance everything by a

SYBIL

35

Beer Bill. The growl of reform was heard, but it was
not very fierce. There was yet time to save himself.
His Grace precipitated a revolution which might have
been delayed for half a century, and never need have
occurred in so aggravated a form. He rather fled
than retired. He commenced his ministry like Bren-
nus, and finished it like the tall Gaul sent to murder
the rival of Sylla, but who dropped his weapon before
the undaunted gaze of his intended victim.

Lord Marney was spared the pang of the catas-
trophe. Promoted to a high office in the household,
and still hoping that, by the aid of his party, it was
yet destined for him to achieve the hereditary purpose
of his famity, he died in the full faith of dukism;
worshipped the duke, and believing that ultimately he
should himself become a duke. It was under all the
circumstances a euthanasia; he expired leaning as it
were on his white wand and babbling of strawberry-
leaves.

CHAPTER IV.

An Important State Secret.

Y DEAR Charles/ said Lady Marney
to Egremont, the morning after the
Derby, as breakfasting with her in
her boudoir, he detailed some of
the circumstances of the race, 'we
must forget your naughty horse. I
sent you a little note this morning, because I wished
to see you most particularly before you went out.
Affairs,' continued Lady Marney, first looking round
the chamber to see whether there were any fairy
listening to her state secrets, 'affairs are critical.'

'No doubt of that,' thought Egremont, the horrid
phantom of settling-day seeming to obtrude itself be-
tween his mother and himself; but, not knowing pre-
cisely at what she was driving, he merely sipped his
tea, and innocently replied, 'Why?'

'There will be a dissolution,' said Lady Marney.
'What! are we coming in?'
Lady Marney shook her head.
'The present men will not better their majority,*
said Egremont.

'1 hope not,' said Lady Marney.
'Why, you always said that, with another general
election, we must come in, whoever dissolved.'
(36)

SYBIL

37

* But that was with the court in our favour/ re-
joined Lady Marney, mournfully.

* What I has the king changed?' said Egremont. *I
thought it was all right.'

•AH was right,' said Lady Marney, 'These men
would have been turned out again, had he only lived
three months longer.'

* Lived 1' exclaimed Egremont.

*Yes,' said Lady Marney; 'the king is dying.'

Slowly delivering himself of an ejaculation, Egre-
mont leant back in his chair.

'He may live a month,' said Lady Marney; 'he
cannot live two. It is the greatest of secrets; known
at this moment to only four individuals, and I com-
municate it to you, my dear Charles, in that absolute
confidence which I hope will always subsist between
us, because it is an event that may greatly affect your
career.'

'How so, my dear mother .J^'

'Marbury! I have settled with Mr. Tadpole that
you should stand for the old borough. With the gov-
ernment in our hands, as 1 had anticipated, at the
general election success I think was certain: under
the circumstances which we must encounter, the
struggle will be more severe, but I think we shall do
it: and it will be a happy day for me to have our own
again, and to see you in Parliament, my dear child.'

'Well, my dear mother, I should like very much
to be in Parliament, and particularly to sit for the old
borough; but 1 fear the contest will be very expensive,'
said Egremont, inquiringly.

'Oh! 1 have no doubt,' said Lady Marney, 'that
we shall have some monster of the middle class, some
tinker or tailor or candlestick-maker, with his long

38 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

purse, preaching reform and practising corruption;
exactly as the Liberals did under Walpole: bribery
was unknown in the time of the Stuarts; but we
have a capital registration, Mr. Tadpole tells me.
And a young candidate with the old name will tell,'
said Lady Marney, with a smile: 'and 1 shall go
down and canvass, and we must do what we can.'

'1 have great faith in your canvassing,' said Egre-
mont; 'but still at the same time, the powder and
shot — '

'Are essential,' said Lady Marney, '1 know it, in
these corrupt days; but Marney will of course supply
those. It is the least he can do: regaining the family
influence, and letting us hold up our heads again. 1
shall write to him the moment 1 am justified,' said Lady
Marney, 'perhaps you will do so yourself, Charles.'

'Why, considering I have not seen my brother
for two years, and we did not part on the best pos-
sible terms — '

* But that is all forgotten.'

'By your good offices, dear mother, who are al-
ways doing good: and yet,' continued Egremont,
after a moment's pause, 'I am not disposed to write
to Marney, especially to ask a favour.'

'Well, I will write,' said Lady Marney; 'though I
cannot admit it as any favour. Perhaps it would be
better that you should see him first. I cannot under-
stand why he keeps so at the Abbey. 1 am sure I
found it a melancholy place enough in my time. I
wish you had gone down there, Charles, if it had
been only for a few days.'

'Well, I did not, my dear mother, and 1 cannot
go now. I shall trust to you. But are you quite
sure that the king is going to die?'

SYBIL

39

* I repeat to you, it is certain,* replied Lady Mar-
ney, in a lowered voice, but decided tone; 'certain,
certain, certain. My authority cannot be mistaken:
but no consideration in the world must throw you off
your guard at this moment; breathe not the shadow
of what you know.'

At this moment a servant entered, and delivered a
note to Lady Marney, who read it with an ironical
smile. It was from Lady St. Julians, and ran thus:

'Most confidential.
'My Dearest Lady Marney, It is a false report ; he
is ill, but not dangerously; the hay fever; he always
has it; nothing more; I will tell my authority when
we meet; I dare not write it. It will satisfy you. I
am going on with my quadrille.

' Most affectionately yours,

'A. St. J.'

'Poor woman! she is always wrong,' said Lady
Marney, throwing the note to Egremont. ' Her quad-
rille will never take place, which is a pity, as it is to
consist only of beauties and eldest sons. I suppose
I must send her a line;' and she wrote:

' My Dearest Lady St. Julians, How good of you
to write to me, and send me such cheering news! I
have no doubt you are right; you always are. I
know he had the hay fever last year. How fortunate
for your quadrille, and how charming it will be! Let
me know if you hear anything further from your un-
mentionable quarter.

'Ever your affectionate

'C. M.'

CHAPTER V.

The Idle Rich. ^

ORD MARNEYleft several children;
his heir was five years older than
the next son, Charles, who at the
period of his father's death was
at Christchurch, and had just en-
tered the last year of his minority.
Attaining that age, he received the sum of fifteen
thousand pounds, his portion, a third of which amount
his expenditure had then already anticipated. Egre-
mont had been brought up in the enjoyment of every
comfort and every luxury that refinement could de-
vise and wealth furnish. He was a favourite child.
His parents emulated each other in pampering and
indulging him. Every freak was pardoned, every whim
was gratified. He might ride what horses he liked,
and if he broke their knees, what in another would
have been deemed a flagrant sin, was in him held
only a proof of reckless spirit. If he were not a thor-
oughly selfish and altogether wilful person, but very
much the reverse, it was not the fault of his parents,
but rather the operation of a benignant nature that
had bestowed on him a generous spirit and a tender
heart, though accompanied with a dangerous suscepti-
(40)

SYBIL

41

bility that made him the child and creature of im-
pulse, and seemed to set at defiance even the course
of time to engraft on his nature any quality of prud-
ence.

The tone of Eton in the days of Charles Egremont
was not of the high character which at present dis-
tinguishes that community. It was the unforeseen
eve of the great change, that, whatever was its pur-
pose or have been its immediate results, at least gave
the first shock to the pseudo-aristocracy of this coun-
try. Then all was blooming; sunshine and odour;
not a breeze disturbing the meridian splendour. Then
the world was not only made for a few, but a very
few. One could almost tell upon one's fingers the
happy families who could do anything, and might
have everything. A schoolboy's ideas of the Church
then were fat livings, and of the State rotten boroughs.
To do nothing and get something formed a boy's ideal
of a manly career. There was nothing in the lot, lit-
tle in the temperament, of Charles Egremont, to make
him an exception to the multitude. Gaily and se-
curely he floated on the brilliant stream. Popular at
school, idolised at home, the present had no cares,
and the future secured him a family seat in Parlia-
ment the moment he entered life, and the inheritance
of a glittering post at court in due time, as its legiti-
mate consequence. Enjoyment, not ambition, seemed
the principle of his existence. The contingency of a
mitre, the certainty of rich preferment, would not
reconcile him to the self-sacrifice which, to a certain
degree, was required from a priest, even in those
days of rampant Erastianism. He left the colonies as
the spoil of his younger brothers; his own ideas of a
profession being limited to a barrack in a London

42 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

park varied by visits to Windsor. But there was
time enough to think of these things.

He enjoyed Oxford as he had Eton. Here his allow-
ance from his father was extravagant, though greatly
increased by tithes from his mother's pin-money.
While he was pursuing his studies, hunting and boat-
ing, driving tandems, riding matches, tempering his
energies in the crapulence of boyish banquets, and
anticipating life, at the risk of expulsion, in a misera-
ble mimicry of metropolitan dissipation, dukism, that
was supposed to be eternal, suddenly crashed.

The Reform Act has not placed the administration
of our affairs in abler hands than conducted them
previously to the passing of the measure, for the most
efficient members of the present cabinet, with some
few exceptions, and those attended by peculiar cir-
cumstances, were ministers before the Reform Act
was contemplated. Nor has that memorable statute
created a Parliament of a higher reputation for public
qualities, such as politic ability, and popular eloquence,
and national consideration, than was furnished by
the old scheme. On the contrary, one house of
Parliament has been irremediably degraded into the
decaying position of a mere court of registry, pos-
sessing great privileges, on condition that it never
exercises them; while the other chamber, that, at the
first blush, and to the superficial, exhibits symptoms
of almost unnatural vitality, engrossing in its orbit
all the business of the country, assumes on a more
studious inspection somewhat of the character of a
select vestry, fulfilling municipal rather than imperial
offices, and beleaguered by critical and clamorous mil-
lions, who cannot comprehend why a privileged and
exclusive senate is requisite to perform functions

SYBIL

43

which immediately concern all, which most personally
comprehend, and which many in their civic spheres
believe they could accomplish in a manner not less
satisfactory, though certainly less ostentatious.

But if it have not furnished us with abler admin-
istrators or a more illustrious senate, the Reform Act
may have exercised on the country at large a beneficial
influence. Has it? Has it elevated the tone of the
public mind ? Has it cultured the popular sensibilities
to noble and ennobling ends ? Has it proposed to the
people of England a higher test of national respect
and confidence than the debasing qualification uni-
versally prevalent in this country since the fatal intro-
duction of the system of Dutch finance? Who will
pretend it? If a spirit of rapacious covetousness,
desecrating all the humanities of life, has been the
besetting sin of England for the last century and a
half, since the passing of the Reform Act the altar of
Mammon has blazed with triple worship. To acquire,
to accumulate, to plunder each other by virtue of
philosophic phrases, to propose a Utopia to consist
only of WEALTH and toil, this has been the breathless
business of enfranchised England for the last twelve
years, until we are startled from our voracious strife
by the wail of intolerable serfage.

Are we then to conclude that the only effect of
the Reform Act has been to create in this country
another of those class interests which we now so
loudly accuse as the obstacles to general amelioration ?
Not exactly that. The indirect influence of the Reform
Act has been not inconsiderable, and may eventually
lead to vast consequences. It set men a-thinking; it
enlarged the horizon of political experience; it led the
public mind to ponder somewhat on the circumstances

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

of our national history; to pry into the beginnings of
some social anomalies, which, they found, were not
so ancient as they had been led to believe, and which
had their origin in causes very different from what
they had been educated to credit; and insensibly it
created and prepared a popular intelligence to which
one can appeal, no longer hopelessly, in an attempt
to dispel the mysteries with which for nearly three
centuries it has been the labour of party writers to
involve a national history, and without the dispersion
of which no political position can be understood and
no social evil remedied.

The events of 1830 did not produce any change in
the modes of thought and life of Charles Egremont.
He took his political cue from his mother, who was
his constant correspondent. Lady Marney was a dis-
tinguished *stateswoman,' as they called Lady Carlisle
in Charles I.'s time, a great friend of Lady St. Julians,
and one of the most eminent and impassioned vo-
taries of dukism. Her first impression on the over-
throw of her hero was astonishment at the impertinence
of his adversaries, mingled with some lofty pity for
their silly ambition and short-lived career. She existed
for a week in the delightful expectation of his Grace
being sent for again, and informed every one in con-
fidence, that 'these people could not form a cabinet.'
When the tocsin of peace, reform, and retrenchment
sounded, she smiled bitterly; was sorry for poor Lord
Grey, of whom she had thought better, and gave
them a year, adding, with consoling malice, 'that it
would be another Canning affair.' At length came
the Reform Bill itself, and no one laughed more
heartily than Lady Marney; not even the House of
Commons to whom it was presented.

SYBIL

45

The bill was thrown out, and Lady Marney gave
a grand ball to celebrate the event, and to compen-
sate the London shopkeepers for the loss of their pro-
jected franchise. Lady Marney was preparing to
resume her duties at court, when, to her great sur-
prise, the firing of cannon announced the dissolution
of Parliament. She turned pale; she was too much in
the secrets of Tadpole and Taper to be deceived as
to the consequences; she sank into her chair, and de-
nounced Lord Grey as a traitor to his order.

Lady Marney, who for six months had been writ-
ing to her son at Oxford the most charming letters,
full of fun, quizzing the whole Cabinet, now an-
nounced to Egremont that a revolution was inevitable,
that all property would be instantly confiscated, the
poor deluded king led to the block or sent over to
Hanover at the best, and the whole of the nobility
and principal gentry, and every one who possessed
anything, guillotined without remorse.

Whether his friends were immediately to resume
power, or whether their estates ultimately were to be
confiscated, the practical conclusion to Charles Egre-
mont appeared to be the same. ' Carpe diem.' He
therefore pursued his career at Oxford unchanged, and
entered life in the year 1833, a younger son with ex-
travagant tastes and expensive habits, with a reputation
for lively talents though uncultivated, for his acquisitions
at Eton had been quite puerile, and subsequently he
had not become a student, — with many manly accom-
plishments, and with a mien and visage that at once
took the fancy and enlisted the affections. Indeed, a
physiologist would hardly have inferred from the coun-
tenance and structure of Egremont the career he had
pursued, or the character which attached to him.

46 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

The general cast and expression of his features when
in repose was pensive; an air of refinement distin-
guished his well-moulded brow; his mouth breathed
sympathy, and his rich brown eye gleamed with
tenderness. The sweetness of his voice in speaking
was in harmony with this organisation.

Two years passed in the most refined circles of
our society exercised a beneficial influence on the gen-
eral tone of Egremont, and may be said to have fin-
ished his education. He had the good sense and the
good taste not to permit his predilection for sports to
degenerate into slang; he yielded himself to the deli-
cate and profitable authority of woman, and, as ever
happens, it softened his manners and brightened his
wit. He was fortunate in having a clever mother,
and he appreciated this inestimable possession. Lady
Marney had great knowledge of society, and some ac-
quaintance with human nature, which she fancied she
had fathomed to its centre; she piqued herself upon
her tact, and indeed she was very quick, but she was
so energetic that her art did not always conceal itself;
very worldly, she was nevertheless not devoid of im-
pulse; she was animated, and would have been ex-
tremely agreeable, if she had not restlessly aspired to
wit; and would certainly have exercised much more
influence in society if she had not been so anxious
to show it. Nevertheless, still with many personal
charms, a frank and yet, if need be, a finished man-
ner, a quick brain, a lively tongue, a buoyant spirit,
and a great social position, Lady Marney was univer-
sally and extremely popular; and adored by her chil-
dren, for she was a mother most affectionate and true.

When Egremont was four-and-twenty, he fell in
love; a real passion. He had fluttered like others

SYBIL

47

from flower to flower, and like others had often
fancied the last perfume the sweetest, and then had
flown away. But now he was entirely captivated.
The divinity was a new beauty; the whole world
raving of her. Egremont also advanced. The Lady
Arabella was not only beautiful: she was clever, fas-
cinating. Her presence was inspiration; at least for
Egremont. She condescended to be pleased by him;
she signalised him by her notice; their names were
mentioned together. Egremont indulged in flattering
dreams. He regretted he had not pursued a profes-
sion; he regretted he had impaired his slender patri-
mony: thought of love in a cottage, and renting a
manor; thought of living a good deal with his mother,
and a little with his brother; thought of the law and
the church; thought once of New Zealand. The
favourite of nature and of fashion, this was the first
time in the life of Egremont that he had been made
conscious that there was something in his position
which, with all its superficial brilliancy, might pre-
pare for him, when youth had fled and the blaze of
society had grown dim, a drear and bitter lot.

He was roused from his reveries by a painful change
in the demeanour of his adored. The mother of the
Lady Arabella was alarmed. She liked her daughter
to be admired even by younger sons, when they
were distinguished, but only at a distance. Mr. Egre-
mont's name had been mentioned too often. It had
appeared coupled with her daughter's even in a Sun-
day paper. The most decisive measures were requisite,
and they were taken. Still smiling when they met,
still kind when they conversed, it seemed by some
magic dexterity which even baffled Egremont, that
their meetings every day grew rarer, and their op-

48 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

portunities for conversation less frequent. At the end
of the season, the Lady Arabella selected from a crowd
of admirers equally qualified, a young peer of great
estate, and of the *old nobility,' a circumstance which,
as her grandfather had only been an East India di-
rector, was very gratifying to the bride.

This unfortunate passion of Charles Egremont,
with its mortifying circumstances and consequences,
was just that earliest shock in one's life which occurs
to all of us; which first makes us think. We have
all experienced that disheartening catastrophe when
the illusions first vanish; and our baulked imagination,
or our mortified vanity, first intimates to us that we
are neither infalUble nor irresistible. Happily 'tis the
season of youth for which the first lessons of ex-
perience are destined; and, bitter and intolerable as is
the first blight of our fresh feelings, the sanguine im-
pulse of early life bears us along. Our first scrape
generally leads to our first travel. Disappointment
requires change of air; desperation, change of scene.
Egremont quitted his country, never to return to it
again; and returned to it after a year and a-halfs
absence a much wiser man. Having left England in a
serious mood, and having already tasted with toler-
able freedom of the pleasures and frivolities of life, he
was not in an inapt humour to observe, to enquire,
and to reflect. The new objects that surrounded him
excited his intelligence; he met, which indeed is the
principal advantage of travel, remarkable men, whose
conversation opened his mind. His mind was worth
opening. Energies began to stir of which he had not
been conscious; awakened curiosity led him to inves-
tigate and to read; he discovered that, when he
imagined his education was completed, it had in fact

SYBIL

not commenced; and that, although he had been at
a public school and a university, he in fact knew
nothing. To be conscious that you are ignorant is a
great step to knowledge. Before an emancipated in-
tellect and an expanding intelligence, the great system
of exclusive manners and exclusive feelings in which
he had been born and nurtured, began to tremble; the
native generosity of his heart recoiled at a recurrence
to that arrogant and frigid life, alike devoid of sym-
pathy and real grandeur.

In the early spring of 1837, Egremont re-entered
the world, where he had once sparkled, and which
he had once conceived to comprise within its circle
all that could interest or occupy man. His mother,
delighted at finding him again under her roof, had re-
moved some long-standing coolness between him and
his elder brother; his former acquaintance greeted him
with cordiality, and introduced him to the new heroes
who had sprung up during the season of his absence.
Apparently Egremont was not disinclined to pursue,
though without eagerness, the same career that had
originally engaged him. He frequented assemblies,
and lingered in clubs; rode in the park, and lounged
at the opera. But there was this difference in his
existence before and since his travels: he was now
conscious he wanted an object; and was ever musing
over action, though as yet ignorant how to act. Per-
haps it was this want of being roused that led him,
it may be for distraction, again to the turf. It was a
pursuit that seemed to him more real than the life of
saloons, full of affectation, perverted ideas, and fac-
titious passions. Whatever might be the impulse,
Egremont however was certainly not slightly inter-
ested in the Derby; and, though by no means uhin-

14 B. D.— 4

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

structed in the mysteries of the turf, had felt such
confidence in his information, that, with his usual
ardour, he had backed to a considerable amount the
horse that ought to have won, but which nevertheless
only ran second.

CHAPTER VI.

allowed to creep
Majesty has been

Le Roi est Mort; Vive la Reine!'

OTWITHSTANDING the confidence
of Lady St. Julians and her un-
rivalled information, the health of
the king did not improve: but
still it was the hay fever, only the
hay fever. An admission had been
into the Court Circular, that * his
slightly indisposed within the last
few days;' but then it was soon followed by a posi-
tive assurance, that his Majesty's favourite and long-
matured resolution to give a state banquet to the
knights of the four orders was immediately to be car-
ried into effect. Lady St. Julians had the first infor-
mation of this important circumstance; it confirmed
her original conviction; she determined to go on with
her quadrille. Egremont, with something interesting
at stake himself, was staggered by this announcement,
and by Lady St. Julians' unshaken faith. He con-
sulted his mother. Lady Marney shook her head.
*Poor woman!' said Lady Marney, *she is always
wrong. I know,' continued her ladyship, placing her
finger to her lip, *that Prince Esterhazy has been
pressing his long-postponed investiture as a Grand

(50

52 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Cross, in order that he may dine at this very banquet;
and it has been announced to him that it is impos-
sible, the king's health will not admit of it. When a
simple investiture is impossible, a state banquet to the
four orders is very probable. No,' said Lady Marney
with a sigh; Mt is a great blow for all of us. but it
is no use shutting our eyes to the fact. The poor
dear king will never show again.'

And about a week after this there appeared the
first bulletin. From that instant, though the gullish
multitude studied the daily reports with grave inter-
est, their hopes and speculations and arrangements
changing with each phrase, for the initiated there was
no suspense. All knew that it was over; and Lady
St. Julians, giving up her quadrille, began to look
about for seats in Parliament for her sons.

'What a happiness it is to have a clever mother!'
exclaimed Egremont, as he pondered over the returns
of his election agent. Lady Marney, duly warned of
the impending catastrophe, was experiencing all the ad-
vantages of prior information. It delighted her to meet
Lady St. Julians driving distractedly about town, calling
at clubs, closeted with red-tapers, making ingenious
combinations that would not work,. by means of which
some one of her sons was to stand in coalition with
some rich parvenu; to pay none of the expenses and
yet to come in first. And all this time. Lady Marney,
serene and smiling, had the daily pleasure of assuring
Lady St. Julians what a relief it was to her that
Charles had fixed on his place. It had been arranged
indeed these weeks past; 'but then, you know,'
concluded Lady Marney in the sweetest voice and
with a blandishing glance, M never did believe in
that hay fever.'

SYBIL

S3

In the meantime the impending event changed the
whole aspect of the political world. The king dying
before the new registration was the greatest blow to
pseudo-Toryism since his Majesty, calling for a hack-
ney coach, went down and dissolved Parliament in
1 83 1. It was calculated by the Tadpoles and Tapers
that a dissolution by Sir Robert, after the registration
of 1837, would give him a clear majority, not too
great a one, but large enough; a manageable majority;
some five-and-twenty or thirty men, who with a
probable peerage or two dangling in the distance,
half-a-dozen positive baronetcies, the Customs for
their constituents, and Court balls for their wives,
might be induced to save the state. O England!
glorious and ancient realm, the fortunes of thy polity
are indeed strange! The wisdom of the Saxons, Nor-
man valour, the statecraft of the Tudors, the national
sympathies of the Stuarts, the spirit of the latter
Guelphs struggling against their enslaved sovereignty,
these are the high qualities that for a thousand years
have secured thy national development. And now all
thy memorial dynasties end in the huckstering rule
of some thirty unknown and anonymous jobbers!
The Thirty at Athens were at least tyrants. They
were marked men. But the obscure majority, who,
under our present constitution, are destined to govern
England, are as secret as a Venetian conclave. Yet
on their dark voices all depends. Would you pro-
mote or prevent some great measure that may affect
the destinies of unborn millions, and the future char-
acter of the people: take, for example, a system of
national education: the minister must apportion the
plunder to the illiterate clan, the scum that floats on
the surface of a party; or hold out the prospect of

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

honours, which are only honourable when in their
transmission they impart and receive lustre; when
they are the meed of public virtue and public services,
and the distinction of worth and of genius. It is im-
possible that the system of the Thirty can long en-
dure in an age of inquiry and agitated spirit Hke the
present. Such a system may suit the balanced inter-
ests and the periodical and alternate command of
rival oligarchical connections; but it can subsist only
by the subordination of the Sovereign and the degra-
dation of the multitude; and cannot accord with an
age whose genius will soon confess that power and
the people are both divine.

*He can't last ten days,' said a Whig secretary
of the treasury with a triumphant glance at Mr.
Taper as they met in Pall Mall; * you're out for our
lives.'

'Don't you make too sure for yourselves,' rejoined
in despair the dismayed Taper. ' It does not follow
that because we are out, that you are in.'

*How do you mean.?'

* There is such a person as Lord Durham in the
world,' said Mr. Taper very solemnly.
*Pish,' said the secretary.

*You may pish,' said Mr. Taper, 'but, if we have
a Radical government, as I believe and hope, they
will not be able to get up the steam as they did in
'31; and what with Church and corn together, and
the Queen Dowager, we may go to the country with
as good a cry as some other persons.'

M will back Melbourne against the field now,' said
the secretary.

'Lord Durham dined at Kensington on Thursday,'
said Taper, ' and not a Whig present.'

SYBIL

55

'Ay; Durham talks very fine at dinner,' said the
secretary, 'but he has no real go in him. When
there is a Prince of Wales, Lord Melbourne means to
make Durham governor to the heir apparent, and
that will keep him quiet/

'What do you hear?' said Mr. Tadpole, joining
them; 'I am told he has quite rallied.'

'Don't you flatter yourself,' said the secretary.

'Well, we shall hear what they say on the hus-
tings,' said Tadpole, looking boldly.

'Who's afraid!' said the secretary. 'No, no, my
dear fellow, you are dead beat; the stake is worth
playing for, and don't suppose we are such flats as
to lose the race for want of jockeying. Your hum-
bugging registration will never do against a new
reign. Our great men mean to shell out, I tell you;
we have got Croucher; we will denounce the Carlton
and corruption all over the kingdom; and if that
won't do, we will swear till we are black in the
face, that the King of Hanover is engaged in a plot
to dethrone our young Queen:' and the triumphant
secretary wished the worthy pair good morning.

'They certainly have a good cry,' said Taper,
mournfully.

'After all, the registration might be better,' said
Tadpole, 'but still it is a good one.'

The daily bulletins became more significant; the
crisis was evidently at hand. A dissolution of Parlia-
ment at any time must occasion great excitement;
combined with a new reign, it inflames the passions
of every class of the community. Even the poor
begin to hope; the old, wholesome superstition that
the Sovereign can exercise power, still lingers; and
the suffering multitude are fain to believe that its

56 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

remedial character may be about to be revealed in
their instance. As for the aristocracy in a new reign,
they are all in a flutter. A bewildering vision of
coronets, stars, and ribbons; smiles, and places at
Court, haunts their noontide speculations and their
midnight dreams. Then we must not forget the
numberless instances in which the coming event is
deemed to supply the long-sought opportunity of dis-
tinction, or the long-dreaded cause of utter discomfi-
ture; the hundreds, the thousands, who mean to get
into Parliament, the units who dread getting out.
What a crashing change from lounging in St. James'
Street to sauntering on Boulogne pier; or, after dining
at Brooks's and supping at Crockford's, to be saved
from destruction by the friendly interposition that
sends you in an official capacity to the marsupial
sympathies of Sydney or Swan River!

Now is the time for the men to come forward
who have claims; claims for spending their money,
which nobody asked them to do, but which of course
they only did for the sake of the party. They never
wrote for their party, or spoke for their party, or
gave their party any other vote than their own; but
they urge their claims, to something; a commissioner-
ship of anything, or a consulship anywhere; if no
place to be had, they are ready to take it out in
dignities. They once looked to the privy council, but
would now be content with an hereditary honour; if
they can have neither, they will take a clerkship in the
treasury for a younger son. Perhaps they may get that
in time; at present they go away growling with a
gaugership; or having with desperate dexterity at length
contrived to transform a tidewaiter into a landwaiter.
But there is nothing like asking, except refusing.

SYBIL

57

Hark! it tolls! All is over. The great bell of the
metropolitan cathedral announces the death of the last
son of George 111. who probably will ever reign in
England. He was a good man: with feelings and
sympathies; deficient in culture rather than ability;
with a sense of duty; and with something of the
conception of what should be the character of an
English monarch. Peace to his manes! We are
summoned to a different scene.

In a palace in a garden, not in a haughty keep,
proud with the fame but dark with the violence of
ages; not in a regal pile, bright with the splendour,
but soiled with the intrigues of courts and factions;
in a palace in a garden, meet scene for youth, and
innocence, and beauty, came a voice that told the
maiden that she must ascend her throne!

The council of England is summoned for the first
time within her bowers. There are assembled the
prelates and captains and chief men of her realm; the
priests of the religion that consoles, the heroes of the
sword that has conquered, the votaries of the craft
that has decided the fate of empires; men grey with
thought, and fame, and age; who are the stewards of
divine mysteries, who have toiled in secret cabinets,
who have encountered in battle the hosts of Europe,
who have struggled in the less merciful strife of
aspiring senates; men too, some of them, lords of a
thousand vassals and chief proprietors of provinces, yet
not one of them whose heart does not at this mo-
ment tremble as he awaits the first presence of the
maiden who must now ascend her throne.

A hum of half-suppressed conversation which would
attempt to conceal the excitement, which some of the
greatest of them have since acknowledged, fills that

58 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

brilliant assemblage; that sea of plumes, and glittering
stars, and gorgeous dresses. Hush! the portals open;
she comes; the silence is as deep as that of a noon-
tide forest. Attended for a moment by her royal
mother and the ladies of her court, who bow and then
retire, Victoria ascends her throne; a girl, alone, and
for the first time, amid an assemblage of men.

In a sweet and thrilling voice, and with a composed
mien which indicates rather the absorbing sense of
august duty than an absence of emotion. The Queen
announces her accession to the throne of her ances-
tors, and her humble hope that divine Providence will
guard over the fulfilment of her lofty trust.

The prelates and captains and chief men of her
realm then advance to the throne, and, kneeling be-
fore her, pledge their troth, and take the sacred oaths
of allegiance and supremacy.

Allegiance to one who rules over the land that
the great Macedonian could not conquer; and over a
continent of which even Columbus never dreamed:
to the Queen of every sea, and of nations in every
zone.

It is not of these that 1 would speak; but of a
nation nearer her footstool, and which at this mo-
ment looks to her with anxiety, with affection, per-
haps with hope. Fair and serene, she has the blood
and beauty of the Saxon. Will it be her proud des-
tiny at length to bear relief to suffering millions, and,
with that soft hand, which might inspire troubadours
and guerdon knights, break the last links in the chain
of Saxon thraldom ?

CHAPTER VII.

Marney Abbey.

HE building which was still called
Marney Abbey, though remote from
the site of the ancient monastery,
was an extensive structure raised
at the latter end of the reign of
lames I., and in the stately and pic-
turesque style of that age. Placed on a noble elevation
in the centre of an extensive and well-wooded park,
it presented a front with two projecting wings of
equal dimensions with the centre, so that the form of
the building was that of a quadrangle, less one of its
sides. Its ancient lattices had been removed, and the
present windows, though convenient, accorded little
with the structure; the old entrance door in the centre
of the building, however, still remained, a wondrous
specimen of fantastic carving: Ionic columns of black
oak, with a profusion of fruits and flowers, and heads
of stags and sylvans. The whole of the building was
crowned with a considerable pediment of what seemed
at the first glance fanciful open-work, but which, ex-
amined more nearly, offered in gigantic letters the
motto of the house of Marney. The portal opened to
a hall such as is now rarely found; with the dais,

(59)

6o BENJAMIN DISRAELI

the screen, the gallery, and the buttery-hatch all per-
fect, and all of carved black oak. Modern luxury,
and the refined taste of the lady of the late lord, had
made Mamey Abbey as remarkable for its comfort
and pleasantness of accommodation as for its ancient
state and splendour. The apartments were in general
furnished with all the cheerful ease and brilliancy of
the modern mansion of a noble, but the grand gallery
of the seventeenth century was still preserved, and
was used on great occasions as the chief reception-
room. You ascended the principal staircase to reach
it through a long corridor. It occupied the whole
length of one of the wings; was one hundred feet
long, and forty-five feet broad, its walls hung with a
collection of choice pictures rich in history; while the
Axminster carpets, the cabinets, carved tables, and
variety of easy chairs, ingeniously grouped, imparted
even to this palatian chamber a lively and habitable air.

Lord Marney was several years the senior of Charles
Egremont, yet still a young man. He was handsome;
there was indeed a general resemblance between the
brothers, though the expression of their countenances
was entirely different; of the same height and air, and
throughout the features a certain family cast: but here
the likeness ceased. The countenance of Lord Marney
bespoke the character of his mind; cynical, devoid of
sentiment, arrogant, literal, hard. He had no imagina-
tion, had exhausted his slight native feeling; but
he was acute, disputatious, and firm even to obstinacy.
Though his early education had been imperfect, he
had subsequently read a good deal, especially in
French literature. He had formed his mind by Hel-
vetius, whose system he deemed irrefutable, and in
whom alone he had faith. Armed with the principles

SYBIL

6i

of his great master, he believed he could pass through
existence in adamantine armour, and always gave you
in the business of life the idea of a man who was
conscious you were trying to take him in, and rather
respected you for it, but the working of whose cold
unkind eye defied you.

There never had been excessive cordiality between
the brothers even in their boyish days, and shortly
after Egremont's entrance into life they had become
estranged. They were to meet now for the first time
since Egremont's return from the continent. Their
mother had arranged their reconciliation. They were
to meet as if no misunderstanding had ever existed
between them; it was specially stipulated by Lord
Marney that there was to be no 'scene.* Apprised
of Egremont's impending arrival, Lord Marney was
careful to be detained late that day at petty sessions,
and entered the room only a few minutes before din-
ner was announced, where he found Egremont not
only with the countess and a young lady who was
staying with her, but with additional bail against any
ebullition of sentiment in the shape of the vicar of
Marney, and a certain Captain Grouse, who was a
kind of aide-de-camp of the earl; killed birds and carved
them; played billiards with him and lost; had, indeed,
every accomplishment that could please woman or
ease man; could sing, dance, draw, make artificial
flies, break horses, exercise a supervision over stewards
and bailiffs, and make everybody comfortable by tak-
ing everything on his own shoulders.

Lady Marney had received Egremont in a manner
which expressed the extreme satisfaction she experi-
enced at finding him once more beneath his brother's
roof When he arrived, indeed, he would have pre-

62 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

ferred to have been shown at once to his rooms, but
a message immediately delivered expressed the wish
of his sister-in-law at once to see him. She received
him alone and with great warmth. She was beauti-
ful and soft as May; a glowing yet delicate face; rich
brown hair, and large blue eyes; not yet a mother,
but with something of the dignity of the matron
blending with the lingering timidity of the girl.

Egremont was glad to join his sister-in-law again
in the drawing-room before dinner. He seated him-
self by her side, and in answer to her enquiries was
giving her some narrative of his travels; the vicar,
who was Low Church, was shaking his head at Lady
Marney's young friend, who was enlarging on the
excellence of Mr. Paget's tales; while Captain Grouse,
vin a stiff white neckcloth, tight pantaloons to show
his celebrated legs, transparent stockings and polished
shoes, was throwing himself into attitudes in the
background, and, with a zeal amounting almost to
enthusiasm, teaching Lady Marney's spaniel to beg,
when the door opened and Lord Marney entered, but,
as if to make security doubly sure, not alone. He
was accompanied by a neighbour and brother magis-
trate. Sir Vavasour Firebrace, a baronet of the earliest
batch, and a gentleman of great family and great es-
tate.

'Well, Charles!'

'How are you, George.^'

And the brothers shook hands.

'Tis the English way; and if they had been in-
clined to fall into each other's arms, they would not
probably have done more.

In a few minutes it was announced that dinner
v/as served, and so, secured from a scene, having a fair

SYBIL

63

appetite, and surrounded by dishes that could agreeably
satisfy it, a kind of vague fraternal sentiment began
to stir the breast of Lord Marney: he really was glad
to see his brother again; remembered the days when
they rode their ponies and played cricket; his voice
softened, his eyes sparkled, and he at length ex-
claimed, 'Do you know, old fellow, it makes me
quite happy to see you here again? Suppose we
take a glass of wine.'

The softer heart and more susceptible spirit of
Egremont were well calculated to respond to this
ebullition of feeling, however slight; and truly it was
for many reasons not without considerable emotion,
that he found himself once more at Marney. He sat
by the side of his gentle sister-in-law, who seemed
pleased by the unwonted cordiality of her husband,
and anxious by many kind offices to second every
indication of good feeling on his part. Captain Grouse
was assiduous; the vicar was of the differential breed,
agreed with Lady Marney on the importance of infant
schools, but recalled his opinion when Lord Marney
expressed his imperious hope that no infant schools
would ever be found in his neighbourhood. Sir Vava-
sour was more than middle-aged, comely, very gen-
tlemanlike, but with an air occasionally of absence
which hardly agreed with his frank and somewhat
hearty idiosyncrasy, his clear brow, florid complexion,
and blue eye. But Lord Marney talked a good deal,
though chiefly dogmatical or argumentative. It was
rather difficult for him to find a sufficient stock of op-
position, but he lay in wait and seized every opening
with wonderful alacrity. Even Gaptain Grouse could
not escape him: if driven to extremity. Lord Marney
would even question his principles on fly-making.

64 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Captain Grouse gave up, but not too soon; he was
well aware that his noble friend's passion for contro-
versy was equal to his love of conquest. As for Lady
Marney, it was evident that, with no inconsiderable
talents, and with an intelligence richly cultivated, the
controversial genius of her husband had completely
cowed her conversational charms. She never advanced
a proposition that he did not immediately bristle up,
and she could only evade the encounter by a grace-
ful submission. As for the vicar, a frequent guest,
he would fain have taken refuge in silence, but the
earl, especially when alone, would what he called
*draw him out,' and the game once unearthed, with
so skilled a pack there was but little fear of a bad run.
When all were reduced to silence. Lord Marney, re-
linquishing controversy, assumed the positive. He
eulogised the new Poor-Law, which he declared would
be the salvation of the country, provided it was ' car-
ried out' in the spirit in which it was developed in
the Marney Union; but then he would add that there
was no district except their union in which it was prop-
erly observed. He was tremendously fierce against
allotments, and analysed the system with merciless
sarcasm. Indeed, he had no inconsiderable acquaint-
ance with the doctrines of the economists, and was
rather inclined to carry them into practice in every
instance, except that of the landed proprietary, which
he clearly proved ' stood upon different grounds ' from
those of any other 'interest.' There was nothing he
hated so much as a poacher, except a lease; though
perhaps, in the catalogue of his aversions, we ought
to give the preference to his anti-ecclesiastical preju-
dice; this amounted even to acrimony. Though there
was no man breathing who was possessed with such

SYBIL

65

a strong repugnance to subscriptions of any kind, it
delighted Lord Marney to see his name among the
contributors to all sectarian institutions. The vicar of
Marney, who had been presented by himself, was his
model of a priest: he left everybody alone. Under the
influence of Lady Marney, the worthy vicar had once
warmed up into some ebullition of very Low Church zeal;
there was some talk of an evening lecture, the schools
were to be remodelled, certain tracts were actually
distributed. But Lord Marney soon stopped all this.
*No priestcraft at Marney,' said this gentle proprietor
of abbey lands.

*I wanted very much to come and canvass for
you,' said Lady Marney to Egremont, 'but George did
not like it.'

*The less the family interfered the better,' said
Lord Marney; *and for my part, I was very much
alarmed when I heard my mother had gone down.'

'Oh! my mother did wonders,' said Egremont; 'we
should have been beaten without her. Indeed, to tell
the truth, I quite gave up the thing the moment they
started their man. Before that we were on velvet;
but the instant he appeared everything was changed,
and I found some of my warmest supporters members
of his committee.'

'You had a formidable opponent, Lord Marney
told me,' said Sir Vavasour. 'Who was he?'

'Oh! a dreadful man! A Scotchman, richer than
Croesus, one McDruggy, fresh from Canton, with a
million of opium in each pocket, denouncing corrup-
tion and bellowing free trade.'

'But they do not care much for free trade in the
old borough?' said Lord Marney.

'No, it was a mistake,' said Egremont; 'and the

14 B, D.— 5

66 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

cry was changed the moment my opponent was on
the ground. Then all the town was placarded with
''Vote for McDruggy and our young Queen," as if
he had coalesced with her Majesty.*

'My mother must have been in despair,' said Lord
Marney.

'We issued our placard instantly of " Vote for our
young Queen and Egremont," which was at least
more modest, and turned out more popular.'

'That 1 am sure was my mother,* said Lord Mar-
ney.

'No,' said Egremont; 'it was the effusion of a far
more experienced mind. My mother was in hourly
communication with head-quarters, and Mr. Taper
sent down the cry by express.'

'Peel, in or out, will support the Poor-Law,' said
Lord Marney, rather audaciously, as he reseated
himself after the ladies had retired. 'He must;' and
he looked at his brother, whose return had in a
great degree been secured by crying that Poor-Law
down.

'It is impossible,' said Charles, fresh from the
hustings, and speaking from the card of Taper; for
the condition of the people was a subject of which
he knew nothing.

'He will carry it out,' said Lord Marney, 'you'll
see, or the land will not support him.'

'I wish,' said Sir Vavasour, 'we could manage
some modification about out-door relief.'

'Modification!' said Lord Marney; 'why, there has
been nothing but modification. What we want is
stringency.'

'The people will never bear it,' said Egremont;
'there must be some change.'

V

SYBIL 67

'You cannot go back to' the abuses of the old
system,' said Captain Grouse, making, as he thought,
a safe observation.

'Better go back to the old system than modify
the new,' said Lord Marney.

'I wish the people would take to it a little more,'
said Sir Vavasour; 'they certainly do not like it in
our parish.'

'The people are very contented here, eh, Slimsey.^'
said Lord Marney.

'Very,' said the vicar.

Hereupon a conversation took place, principally sus-
tained by the earl and the baronet, which developed
all the resources of the great parochial mind. Diet-
aries, bastardy, gaol regulations, game laws, were
amply discussed; and Lord Marney wound up with a
declaration of the means by which the country might
be saved, and which seemed principally to consist of
high prices and Low Church.

'If the Sovereign could only know her best friends,'
said Sir Vavasour, with a sigh.

Lord Marney seemed to get uneasy.

'And avoid the fatal mistakes of her predecessor,'
continued the baronet.

'Charles, another glass of claret,' said the earl.

'She might yet rally round the throne a body of
men — '

'Then we will go to the ladies,' said the earl,
abruptly disturbing his guest.

CHAPTER VIII.

*The Question of the Day.'

HERE was music as they re-entered
the drawing-room. Sir Vavasour
attached himself to Egremont.

^ ' It is a great pleasure for me
to see you again, Mr. Egremont/
said the worthy baronet. 'Your

father was my earliest and kindest friend. I remem-
ber you at Firebrace, a very little boy. Happy to see
you again, sir, in so eminent a position; a legislator
— one of our legislators. It gave me a sincere satis-
faction to observe your return.'

'You are very kind, Sir Vavasour.'

'But it is a responsible position,' continued the
baronet. 'Think you they'll stand? A majority, I
suppose, they have; but, I conclude, in time. Sir
Robert will have it in time. We must not be in a
hurry; "the more haste" — you know the rest. The
country is decidedly conservative. All that we want
now is a strong government, that will put all things
to rights. If the poor king had lived — '

'He would have sent these men to the right-about,'
said Egremont, a young politician, proud of his secret
intelligence.

(68)

SYBIL

69

*Ah! the poor king!' said Sir Vavasour, shaking
his head.

'He was entirely with us,' said Egremont.
'Poor man!' said Sir Vavasour.
'You think it was too late, then?' said his com-
panion.

'You are a young man entering political life,' said
the baronet, taking Egremont kindly by the arm, and
leading him to a sofa; 'everything depends on the
first step. You have a great opportunity. Nothing
can be done by a mere individual. The most power-
ful body in this country wants a champion.'

'But you can depend on Peel.^' said Egremont.

'He is one of us; we ought to be able to depend
on him. But I have spoken to him for an hour, and
could get nothing out of him.'

'He is cautious; but depend upon it, he will stand
or fall by the land.'

'I am not thinking of the land,' said Sir Vavasour;
'of something much more important; with all the in-
fluence of the land, and a great deal more besides;
of an order of men who are ready to rally round the
throne, and are, indeed, if justice were done to them,
its natural and hereditary champions.' Egremont
looked perplexity. 'I am speaking,' added Sir Vava-
sour in a solemn voice, 'I am speaking of the bar-
onets!'

'The baronets! And what do they want?'

'Their rights; their long- withheld rights. The poor
king was with us. He has frequently expressed to
me and other deputies his determination to do us
justice; but he was not a strong-minded man,' said
Sir Vavasour, with a sigh ; ' and in these revolutionary
and levelling times he had a hard task, perhaps. And

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

the peers, who are our brethren, they were, I fear,
against us. But, in spite of the ministers and in
spite of the peers, had the poor king lived we should
at least have had the badge,' added Sir Vavasour,
mournfully.

* The badge! '

' It would have satisfied Sir Grosvenor le Draughte,'
said Sir Vavasour; 'and he had a strong party with

him; he was for compromise, but d him, his

father was only an accoucheur.'

'And you wanted more?' inquired Egremont, with
a demure look.

'All, or nothing,' said Sir Vavasour; 'principle is
ever my motto, no expediency. 1 made a speech to
the order at the Clarendon; there were four hundred
of us; the feeling v/as very strong.'

'A powerful party,' said Egremont.

'And a military order, sir, if properly understood.
What could stand against us ? The Reform Bill could
never have passed if the baronets had been organ-
ised.'

'1 have no doubt you could bring us in now,' said
Egremont.

'That is exactly what 1 told Sir Robert. 1 want
him to be brought in by his own order. It would be
a grand thing.'

'There is nothing like esprit de corps/ said Egre-
mont.

'And such a body!' exclaimed Sir Vavasour, with
animation. ' Picture us for a moment, to yourself,
going down in procession to Westminster, for exam-
ple, to hold a chapter. Five or six hundred baronets
in dark green costume, — the appropriate dress of
equites aurati; each not only with his badge, but with

SYBIL

71

his collar of SS. ; belted and scarfed ; his star ghtter-
ing; his pennon flying; his hat white, with a plume
of white feathers; of course the sword and the gilt
spurs. In our hand, the thumb-ring and signet not
forgotten, we hold our coronet of two balls!'

Egremont stared with irrepressible astonishment at
the excited being, who unconsciously pressed his
companion's arm as he drew this rapid sketch of the
glories so unconstitutionally withheld from him.

'A magnificent spectacle!' said Egremont.

' Evidently the body destined to save this country,'
eagerly continued Sir Vavasour. 'Blending all sym-
pathies; the crown of which they are the peculiar
champions; the nobles of whom they are the popular
branch; the people who recognise in them their nat-
ural leaders. But the picture is not complete. We
should be accompanied by an equal number of gallant
knights, our eldest sons, who, the moment they come
of age, have the right to claim knighthood of their
Sovereign, while their mothers and wives, no longer
degraded to the nomenclature of a sheriff's lady, but
resuming their legal or analogical dignities, and styled
the "honourable baronetess," with her coronet and
robe, or the ''honourable knightess," with her golden
collar of SS., and chaplet or cap of dignity, may
either accompany the procession, or, ranged in gal-
leries in a becoming situation, rain influence from
above.'

M am all for their going in the procession,' said
Egremont.

'The point is not so clear,' said Sir Vavasour,
solemnly; 'and indeed, although we have been firm
in defining our rightful claims in our petitions, as for
*' honorary epithets, secondary titles, personal decora-

72 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

tions, and augmented heraldic bearings," I am not
clear, if the government evinced a disposition for a
liberal settlement of the question, 1 would not urge a
too stringent adherence to every point. For instance,
1 am prepared myself, great as would be the sacrifice,
even to renounce the claim of secondary titles for our
eldest sons, if, for instance, they would secure us our
coronet.'

*Fie, fie. Sir Vavasour,' said Egremont, seriously;
'remember principle: no expediency, no compromise.'

'You are right,' said the baronet, colouring a little;
'and do you know, Mr. Egremont, you are the only
individual 1 have yet met out of the order, who has
taken a sensible view of this great question, which,
after all, is the question of the day.'

CHAPTER IX.

A Significant Event.

HE situation of the rural town of
Marney was one of the most de-
Hghtful easily to be imagined. In
a spreading dale, contiguous to
the margin of a clear and lively
stream, surrounded by meadows and
gardens, and backed by lofty hills, undulating and
richly wooded, the traveller on the opposite heights
of the dale would often stop to admire the merry
prospect that recalled to him the traditional epithet of
his country.

Beautiful illusion! For behind that laughing land-
scape, penury and disease fed upon the vitals of a
miserable population.

The contrast between the interior of the town and
its external aspect was as striking as it was full of
pain. With the exception of the dull high street,
which had the usual characteristics of a small agri-
cultural market town, some sombre mansions, a dingy
inn, and a petty bourse, Marney mainly consisted of
a variety of narrow and crowded lanes formed by
cottages built of rubble, or unhewn stones without
cement, and, from age or badness of the material,

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74 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

looking as if they could scarcely hold together. The
gaping chinks admitted every blast; the leaning
chimneys had lost half their original height; the rotten
rafters were evidently misplaced; while in many in-
stances the thatch, yawning in some parts to admit
the wind and wet, and in all utterly unfit for
its original purpose of giving protection from the
weather, looked more like the top of a dunghill than
a cottage. Before the doors of these dwellings, and
often surrounding them, ran open drains full of animal
and vegetable refuse, decomposing into disease, or
sometimes in their imperfect course filling foul pits or
spreading into stagnant pools, while a concentrated
solution of every species of dissolving filth was al-
lowed to soak through, and thoroughly impregnate,
the walls and ground adjoining.

These wretched tenements seldom consisted of
more than two rooms, in one of which the whole
family, however numerous, were obliged to sleep,
without distinction of age, or sex, or suffering. With
the water streaming down the walls, the light dis-
tinguished through the roof, with no hearth even
in winter, the virtuous mother in the sacred pangs of
childbirth gives forth another victim to our thought-
less civilisation; surrounded by three generations whose
inevitable presence is more painful than her sufferings
in that hour of travail; while the father of her coming
child, in another corner of the sordid chamber, lies
stricken by that typhus which his contaminating dwell-
ing has breathed into his veins, and for whose next
prey is perhaps destined his new-born child. These
swarming walls had neither windows nor doors suf-
ficient to keep out the weather, or admit the sun, or
supply the means of ventilation; the humid and putrid

SYBIL

75

roof of thatch exhaling malaria like all other decaying
vegetable matter. The dwelling-rooms were neither
boarded nor paved; and whether it were that some
were situate in low and damp places, occasionally
flooded by the river, and usually much below the
level of the road; or that the springs, as was often
the case, would burst through the mud floor, the
ground was at no time better than so much clay, while
sometimes you might see little channels cut from the
centre under the doorways to carry off the water, the
door itself removed from its hinges; a resting-place
for infancy in its deluged home. These hovels were
in many instances not provided with the commonest
conveniences of the rudest police; contiguous to every
door might be observed the dung-heap on which
every kind of filth was accumulated, for the purpose
of being disposed of for manure, so that, when the
poor man opened his narrow habitation in the hope
of refreshing it with the breeze of summer, he was
met with a mixture of gases from reeking dunghills.

This town of Marney was a metropolis of agricul-
tural labour, for the proprietors of the neighbourhood
having for the last half-century acted on the system
of destroying the cottages on their estates, in order
to become exempted from the maintenance of the
population, the expelled people had flocked to Marney,
where, during the war, a manufactory had afforded
them some relief, though its wheels had long ceased
to disturb the waters of the Mar.

Deprived of this resource, they had again gradually
spread themselves over that land which had, as it
were, rejected them; and obtained from its churlish
breast a niggardly subsistence. Their re-entrance into
the surrounding parishes was viewed with great suspi-

76 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

cion; their renewed settlement opposed by every
ingenious contrivance. Those who availed themselves
of their labour were careful that they should not be-
come dwellers on the soil; and though, from the
excessive competition, there were few districts in the
kingdom where the rate of wages was more de-
pressed, those who were fortunate enough to obtain
the scant remuneration had, in addition to their toil,
to endure, each morn and even, a weary journey be-
fore they could reach the scene of their labour, or
return to the squalid hovel which profaned the name
of home. To that home, over which malaria hovered,
and round whose shivering hearth were clustered
other guests besides the exhausted family of toil,
Fever, in every form, pale Consumption, exhausting
Synochus, and trembling Ague, returned, after cul-
tivating the broad fields of merry England, the bold
British peasant, returned to encounter the worst of
diseases, with a frame the least qualified to oppose
them; a frame that, subdued by toil, was never sus-
tained by animal food; drenched by the tempest,
could not change its dripping rags; and was indebted
for its scanty fuel to the windfalls of the woods.

The eyes of this unhappy race might have been
raised to the solitary spire that sprang up in the
midst of them, the bearer of present consolation, the
harbinger of future equality; but Holy Church at Mar-
ney had forgotten her sacred mission. We have in-
troduced the reader to the vicar, an orderly man, who
deemed he did his duty if he preached each week
two sermons, and enforced humility on his congrega-
tion, and gratitude for the blessings of this life. The
high street and some neighbouring gentry were the
staple of his hearers. Lord and Lady Marney, at-

SYBIL

77

tended by Captain Grouse, came every Sunday morn-
ing, with commendable regularity, and were ushered
into the invisible interior of a vast pew, that occupied
half of the gallery, was lined with crimson damask,
and furnished with easy chairs, and, for those who
chose them, well-padded stools of prayer. The peo-
ple of Marney took refuge in conventicles, which
abounded; little plain buildings of pale brick, with
the names painted on them of Sion, Bethel, Bethesda;
names of a distant land, and the language of a per-
secuted and ancient race; yet, such is the mysterious
power of their divine quality, breathing consolation in
the nineteenth century to the harassed forms and the
harrowed souls of a Saxon peasantry.

But however devoted to his flock might have
been the Vicar of Marney, his exertions for their
well-being, under any circumstances, must have been
mainly limited to spiritual consolation. Married, and
a father, he received for his labours the small tithes
of the parish, which secured to him an income by no
means equal to that of a superior banker's clerk, or
the cook of a great loanmonger. The great tithes of
Marney, which might be counted by thousands,
swelled the vast rental which was drawn from this
district by the fortunate earls that bore its name.

The morning after the arrival of Egremont at the
Abbey, an unusual stir might have been observed in
the high street of the town. Round the portico of
the Green Dragon hotel and commercial inn, a knot
of principal personages, the chief lawyer, the brewer,
the vicar himself, and several of those easy quidnuncs
who abound in country towns, and who rank under
the designation of retired gentlemen, were in close
and earnest converse. In a short time, a servant on

78 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

horseback, in the Abbey livery, galloped up to the
portico, and delivered a letter to the vicar. The ex-
citement apparently had now greatly increased. On
the opposite side of the way to the important group,
a knot, in larger numbers, but deficient in quality,
had formed themselves, and remained transfixed with
gaping mouths and a curious, not to say alarmed air.
The head constable walked up to the door of the
Green Dragon, and, though he did not presume to
join the principal group, was evidently in attendance,
if required. The clock struck eleven; a cart had
stopped to watch events, and a gentleman's coach-
man riding home with a led horse.

'Here they are!' said the brewer.

'Lord Marney himself,' said the lawyer.

'And Sir Vavasour Firebrace, I declare! I wonder
how he came here,' said a retired gentleman, who
had been a tallow-chandler on Holborn Hill.

The vicar took off his hat, and all uncovered.
Lord Marney and his brother magistrate rode briskly
up to the inn, and rapidly dismounted.

'Well, Snigford,' said his lordship, in a peremptory
tone, 'this is a pretty business; I'll have this stopped
directly.'

Fortunate man, if he succeeded in doing so! The
torch of the incendiary had for the first time been
introduced into the parish of Marney; and last night
the primest stacks of the Abbey farm had blazed, a
beacon to the agitated neighbourhood.

CHAPTER X.

A Stroll through the Abbey.

T IS not so much the fire, sir,' said
) Mr. Bingley, of the Abbey farm,
to Egremont, 'but the temper of
the people that alarms me. Do
fy you know, sir, there were two or
three score of them here, and, ex-

cept my own farm-servants, not one of them would
lend a helping hand to put out the flames, though,
with water so near, they might have been of great
service.'

'You told my brother. Lord Marney, this?'

'Oh! it's Mr. Charles I'm speaking to! My service
to you, sir; I'm glad to see you in these parts again.
It's a long time that we have had that pleasure, sir.
Travelling in foreign parts, as I have heard say?'

'Something of that; but very glad to find myself
at home once more, Mr. Bingley, though very sorry
to have such a welcome as a blazing rick at the Ab-
bey farm.'

'Well, do you know, Mr. Charles, between our-
selves,' and Mr. Bingley lowered his tone and looked
around him, 'things is very bad here; I can't make
out, for my part, what has become of the country.

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8o BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Tayn't the same land to live in as it was when you
used to come to our moor coursing, with the old
lord; you remember that, I be sure, Mr. Charles?'

"Tis not easy to forget good sport, Mr. Bingley.
With your permission, I will put my horse up here for
half an hour. I have a fancy to stroll to the ruins.'

'You wunna find them much changed,' said the
farmer, smiling. ' They have seen a deal of different
things in their time! But you will taste our ale, Mr.
Charles ? '

' When 1 return.'

But the hospitable Bingley would take no denial,
and as his companion waived on the present occasion
entering his house, for the sun had been some time
declining, the farmer, calling one of his labourers to
take Egremont's horse, hastened into the house to fill
the brimming cup.

*And what do you think of this fire?' said Egre-
mont to the hind.

'I think 'tis hard times for the poor, sir.'

' But rick-burning will not make the times easier,
my good man.'

The man made no reply, but with a dogged look
led away the horse to the stable.

About half a mile from Marney the dale narrowed,
and the river took a winding course. It ran through
meads, soft and vivid with luxuriant vegetation,
bounded on either side by rich hanging woods, save
where occasionally a quarry broke the verdant bosom
of the heights with its rugged and tawny form. Fair
stone and plenteous timber, and the current of fresh
waters, combined, with the silent and secluded scene
screened from every harsh and angry wind, to form
the sacred spot that in old days Holy Church loved

SYBIL

8i

to hallow with its beauteous and enduring structures.
Even the stranger, therefore, when he had left the
town about two miles behind him, and had heard the
farm and mill which he had since past called the Ab-
bey farm and the Abbey mill, might have been pre-
pared for the grateful vision of some monastic remains.
As for Egremont, he had been almost born amid the
ruins of Marney Abbey; its solemn relics were asso-
ciated with his first and freshest fancies; every foot-
step was as familiar to him as it could have been to
one of the old monks; yet never without emotion
could he behold these unrivalled remains of one of
the greatest of the great religious houses of the North.

Over a space of not less than ten acres might still
be observed the fragments of the great Abbey: these
were, towards their limit, in general moss-grown and
mouldering memorials that told where once rose the
offices, and spread the terraced gardens, of the old
proprietors ; here might still be traced the dwelling of
the lord abbot; and there, still more distinctly, be-
cause built on a greater scale and of materials still
more intended for perpetuity, the capacious hospital,
a name that did not then denote the dwelling of
disease, but a place where all the rights of hospitality
were practised; where the traveller, from the proud
baron to the lonely pilgrim, asked the shelter and the
succour that never were denied, and at whose gate,
called the Portal of the Poor, the peasants on the Ab-
bey lands, if in want, might appeal each morn and
night for raiment and for food.

But it was in the centre of this tract of ruins, oc-
cupying a space of not less than two acres, that,
with a strength which had defied time, and with a
beauty which had at last turned away the wrath of

14 B. D.— 6

82 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

I

man, still rose, if not in perfect, yet admirable, form
and state, one of the noblest achievements of Christian
art, the Abbey church. The summer vault was now
its only roof, and all that remained of its gorgeous
windows was the vastness of their arched symmetry,
and some wreathed relics of their fantastic framework,
but the rest was uninjured.

From the west window, looking over the transept
chapel of the Virgin, still adorned with pillars of
marble and alabaster, the eye wandered down the
nave to the great orient light, a length of nearly three
hundred feet, through a gorgeous avenue of unshaken
walls and columns that clustered to the skies. On
each side of the Lady's chapel rose a tower. One,
which was of great antiquity, being of that style
which is commonly called Norman, short, and thick,
and square, did not mount much above the height of
the western front; but the other tower was of a
character very different. It was tall and light, and of
a Gothic style most pure and graceful; the stone of
which it was built, of a bright and even sparkling
colour, and looking as if it were hewn but yesterday.
At first, its turreted crest seemed injured; but the
truth is, it was unfinished; the workmen were busied
on this very tower the day that old Baldwin Grey-
mount came as the king's commissioner to enquire
into the conduct of this religious house. The abbots
loved to memorise their reigns by some public work,
which should add to the beauty of their buildings or
the convenience of their subjects; and the last of the
ecclesiastical lords of Marney, a man of fine taste, and
a skilful architect, was raising his new belfry for his
brethren, when the stern decree arrived that the bells
should no more sound. And the hymn was no more

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83

to be chaunted in the Lady's chapel; and the candles
were no more to be lit on the high altar; and the
gate of the poor was to be closed for ever; and the
wanderer was no more to find a home.

The body of the church was in many parts over-
grown with brambles, and in all covered with a rank
vegetation. It had been a sultry day, and the blaze
of the meridian heat still inflamed the air; the kine,
for shelter rather than for sustenance, had wandered
through some broken arches, and were lying in the
shadow of the nave. This desecration of a spot once
sacred, still beautiful and solemn, jarred on the feel-
ings of Egremont. He sighed, and turning away,
followed a path that after a few paces led him into
the cloister garden. This was a considerable quad-
rangle, once surrounding the garden of the monks;
but all that remained of that fair pleasaunce was a
solitary yew in its centre, which seemed the oldest
tree that could well live, and was, according to tra-
dition, more ancient than the most venerable walls of
the Abbey. Round this quadrangle were the refectory,
the library, and the kitchen, and above them the cells
and dormitory of the brethren. An imperfect stair-
case, not without danger, led to these unroofed
chambers; but Egremont, familiar with the way, did
not hesitate to pursue it, so that he soon found him-
self on an elevation overlooking the garden, while
further on extended the vast cloisters of the monks,
and adjoining was a cemetery, that had once been
enclosed, and communicated with the cloister garden.

It was one of those summer days that are so still,
that they seem as it were a holiday of Nature. The
weary winds were sleeping in some grateful cavern,
and the sunbeams basking on some fervent knoll; the

84 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

river floated with a drowsy unconscious course; there
was no wave in the grass, no stir in the branches.

A silence so profound amid these solemn ruins
offered the perfection of solitude; and there was that
stirring in the mind of Egremont which rendered him
far from indisposed for this lonehness.

The slight words that he had exchanged with the
farmer and the hind had left him musing. Why was
England not the same land as in the days of his
light-hearted youth ? Why were these hard times for
the poor? He stood among the ruins that, as the
farmer had well observed, had seen many changes:
changes of creeds, of dynasties, of laws, of manners.
New orders of men had arisen in the country, new
sources of wealth had opened, new dispositions of
power to which that wealth had necessarily led. His
own house, his own order, had established them-
selves on the ruins of that great body, the emblems
of whose ancient magnificence and strength sur-
rounded him. And now his order was in turn
menaced. And the People, the millions of Toil on
whose unconscious energies during these changeful
centuries all rested, what changes had these centuries
brought to them ? Had their advance in the national
scale borne a due relation to that progress of their
rulers, which had accumulated in the treasuries of a
limited class the riches of the world, and made their
possessors boast that they were the first of nations;
the most powerful and the most free, the most en-
lightened, the most moral, and the most religious
Were there any rick-burners in the times of the lord
abbots ? And if not, why not ? And why should the
stacks of the Earls of Marney be destroyed, and those
of the abbots of Marney spared ?

FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING BY FRANCIS VAUX WILSON

Looking around, he observed in the cemetery two men.
One was standing beside a tomb,

(See page 85.)

SYBIL

85

Brooding over these suggestions, some voices dis-
turbed him, and, looking round, he observed in the
cemetery two men: one was standing beside a tomb,
which his companion was apparently examining.

The first was of lofty stature, and, though dressed
with simplicity, had nothing sordid in his appearance.
His garments gave no clue to his position in life:
they might have been worn by a squire or by his
gamekeeper; a dark velveteen dress and leathern
gaiters. As Egremont caught his form, he threw his
broad-brimmed country hat upon the ground, and
showed a frank and manly countenance. His com-
plexion might in youth have been ruddy, but time
and time's attendants, thought and passion, had paled
it; his chestnut hair, faded, but not grey, still clus-
tered over a noble brow; his features were regular
and handsome, a well-formed nose, the square mouth
and its white teeth, and the clear grey eye which
befitted such an idiosyncrasy. His time of vigorous
manhood, for he was nearer forty than fifty years of
age, perhaps better suited his athletic form than the
more supple and graceful season of youth.

Stretching his powerful arms in the air, and de-
livering himself of an exclamation which denoted his
weariness, and which had broken the silence, he ex-
pressed to his companion his determination to rest
himself under the shade of the yew in the contiguous
garden, and, inviting his friend to follow him, he
took up his hat and moved away.

There was something in the appearance of the
stranger that interested Egremont; and, waiting till he
had established himself in his pleasant resting-place,
Egremont descended into the cloister garden and de-
termined to address him.

CHAPTER XI.

A Seraphic Appearance.

I

OU lean against an ancient trunk,'
said Egremont, carelessly advanc-
ing to the stranger, who looked
up at him without any expression
of surprise, and then replied, * They
say 'tis the trunk beneath whose
branches the monks encamped when they came to
this valley to raise their building. It was their house,
till with the wood and stone around them, their
labour and their fine art, they piled up their abbey.
And then they were driven out of it, and it came to
this. Poor men! poor men!'

'They would hardly have forfeited their resting-
place had they deserved to retain it,' said Egremont.

'They were rich. I thought it was poverty that
was a crime,' replied the stranger, in a tone of sim-
phcity.

'But they had committed other crimes.'

'It may be so; we are very frail. But their his-
tory has been written by their enemies; they were con-
demned without a hearing; the people rose oftentimes
in their behalf; and their property was divided among
those on whose reports it was forfeited.'

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SYBIL

87

'At any rate, it was a forfeiture which gave life to
the community,' said Egremont; 'the lands are held
by active men and not by drones.'

*A drone is one who does not labour/ said the
stranger; 'whether he wear a cowl or a coronet, 'tis
the same to me. Somebody, I suppose, must own the
land; though I have heard say that this individual
tenure is not a necessity; but, however this may be,
I am not one who would object to the lord, provided
he were a gentle one. All agree that the monastics
were easy landlords; their rents were low; they
granted leases in those days. Their tenants, too,
might renew their term before their tenure ran out: so
they were men of spirit and property. There were
yeomen then, sir: the country was not divided into
two classes, masters and slaves; there was some
resting-place between luxury and misery. Comfort
was an English habit then, not merely an EngUsh
word.'

' And do you really think they were easier land-
lords than our present ones.?^' said Egremont, inquir-
ingly.

'Human nature would tell us that, even if history
did not confess it. The monastics could possess no
private property; they could save no money; they
could bequeath nothing. They lived, received, and
expended in common. The monastery, too, was a
proprietor that never died and never wasted. The
farmer had a deathless landlord then; not a harsh
guardian, or a grinding mortgagee, or a dilatory master
in chancery: all was certain; the manor had not to
dread a change of lords, or the oaks to tremble at the
axe of the squandering heir. How proud we are still
in England of an old family, though, God knows, 'tis

88 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

rare to see one now. Yet the people like to say, *'We
held under him, and his father and his grandfather
before him " : they know that such a tenure is a benefit.
The abbot was ever the same. The monks were, in
short, in every district a point of refuge for all who
needed succour, counsel, and protection; a body of
individuals having no cares of their own, with wis-
dom to guide the inexperienced, with wealth to re-
lieve the suffering, and often with power to protect
the oppressed.'

'You plead their cause with feeling,' said Egre-
mont, not unmoved.

*It is my own; they were the sons of the people,
like myself.'

'I had thought rather these monasteries were the
resort of the younger branches of the aristocracy,' said
Egremont.

'Instead of the pension list,' replied his companion,
smiling, but not with bitterness. 'Well, if we must
have an aristocracy, I would rather that its younger
branches should be monks and nuns than colonels
without regiments, or housekeepers of royal palaces
that exist only in name. Besides, see what advantage
to a minister if the unendowed aristocracy were thus
provided for now. He need not, like a minister in
these days, entrust the conduct of public affairs to in-
dividuals notoriously incompetent, appoint to the com-
mand of expeditions generals who never saw a field,
make governors of colonies out of men who never
could govern themselves, or find an ambassador in a
broken dandy or a blasted favourite. It is true that
many of the monks and nuns were persons of noble
birth. Why should they not have been.? The aris-
tocracy had their share; no more. They, like all other

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89

classes, were benefited by the monasteries: but the
list of the mitred abbots, when they were suppressed,
shows that the great majority of the heads of houses
were of the people.'

' Well, whatever difference of opinion may exist
on these points,' said Egremont, 'there is one on
which there can be no controversy: the monks were
great architects.'

'Ah! there it is,' said the stranger, in a tone of
plaintiveness; 'if the world only knew what they
had lost! I am sure that not the faintest idea is
generally prevalent of the appearance of England be-
fore and since the dissolution. Why, sir, in England
and Wales alone, there were of these institutions of
different sizes, I mean monasteries, and chantries and
chapels, and great hospitals, considerably upwards of
three thousand; all of them fair buildings, many of
them of exquisite beauty. There were on an average
in every shire at least twenty structures such as this
was; in this great county double that number:
estabhshments that were as vast and as magnificent
and as beautiful as your Belvoirs and your Chats-
worths, your Wentworths and your Stowes. Try to
imagine the effect of thirty or forty Chatsworths in
this county, the proprietors of which were never
absent. You complain enough now of absentees.
The monks were never non-resident. They expended
their revenue among those whose labour had pro-
duced it. These holy men, too, built and planted, as
they did everything else, for posterity: their churches
were cathedrals; their schools colleges; their halls and
libraries the muniment rooms of kingdoms; their
woods and waters, their farms and gardens, were laid
out and disposed on a scale and in a spirit that are

90 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

now extinct; they made the country beautiful, and
the people proud of their country.'

'Yet if the monks were such public benefactors,
why did not the people rise in their favour ? '

'They did, but too late. They struggled for a
century, but they struggled against property, and they
were beat. As long as the monks existed, the people,
when aggrieved, had property on their side. And
now 'tis all over,' said the stranger; 'and travellers
come and stare at these ruins, and think themselves
very wise to moralise over time. They are the
children of violence, not of time. It is war that
created these ruins, civil war, of all our civil wars
the most inhuman, for it was waged with the un-
resisting. The monasteries were taken by storm, they
were sacked, gutted, battered with warlike instru-
ments, blown up with gunpowder; you may see the
marks of the blast against the new tower here. Never
was such a plunder. The whole face of the country
for a century was that of a land recently invaded by
a ruthless enemy; it was worse "than the Norman con-
quest; nor has England ever lost this character of
ravage. I don't know whether the union workhouses
will remove it. They are building something for the
people at last. After an experiment of three centuries,
your gaols being full, and your treadmills losing
something of their virtue, you have given us a substi-
tute for the monasteries.'

'You lament the old faith,' said Egremont, in a
tone of respect.

'I am not viewing the question as one of faith,'
said the stranger. ' It is not as a matter of religion,
but as a matter of right, that 1 am considering it: as
a matter, I should say, of private right and public

SYBIL 91

happiness. You might have changed, if you thought
fit, the religion of the abbots as you changed the
religion of the bishops: but you had no right to de-
prive men of their property, and property moreover
which, under their administration, so mainly contrib-
uted to the welfare of the community.'

'As for community,' said a voice which pro-
ceeded neither from Egremont nor the stranger,
'with the monasteries expired the only type that
we ever had in England of such an intercourse.
There is no community in England; there is ag-
gregation, but aggregation under circumstances which
make it rather a dissociating than a uniting princi-
ple.'

It was a still voice that uttered these words, yet
one of a peculiar character; one of those voices that
instantly arrest attention: gentle and yet solemn,
earnest yet unimpassioned. With a step as whisper-
ing as his tone, the man who had been kneeling by
the tomb had unobserved joined his associate and
Egremont. He hardly reached the middle height; his
form slender, but well-proportioned; his pale counte-
nance, slightly marked with the small-pox, was re-
deemed from absolute ugliness by a highly intellectual
brow, and large dark eyes that indicated deep sensi-
bility and great quickness of apprehension. Though
young, he was already a little bald; he was dressed
entirely in black; the fairness of his linen, the neat-
ness of his beard, his gloves much worn, yet carefully
mended, intimated that his faded garments were the
result of necessity rather than of negligence.

'You also lament the dissolution of these bodies,'
said Egremont.

'There is so much to lament in the world in

92 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

which we live/ said the younger of the strangers,
'that I can spare no pang for the past.'

'Yet you approve of the principle of their society;
you prefer it, you say, to our existing life.'

'Yes; 1 prefer association to gregariousness.'

'That is a distinction,' said Egremont, musingly.

'It is a community of purpose that constitutes so-
ciety,' continued the younger stranger; 'without that,
men may be drawn into contiguity, but they still
continue virtually isolated.'

'And is that their condition in cities?'

'It is their condition everywhere; but in cities that
condition is aggravated. A density of population im-
plies a severer struggle for existence, and a consequent
repulsion of elements brought into too close contact.
In great cities men are brought together by the de-
sire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation,
but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for
all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity
teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern
society acknowledges no neighbour.'

'Well, we live in strange times,' said Egremont,
struck by the observation of his companion, and re-
lieving a perplexed spirit by an ordinary exclamation,
which often denotes that the mind is more stirred
than it cares to acknowledge, or at the moment is
able to express.

'When the infant begins to walk, it also thinks
that it lives in strange times,' said his companion.

'Your inference .^^ ' asked Egremont.

'That society, still in its infancy, is beginning to
feel its way.'

'This is a new reign,' said Egremont, 'perhaps it
is a new era.'

SYBIL

93

'I think so,' said the younger stranger.

*I hope so/ said the elder one.

'Well, society may be in its infancy,' said Egre-
mont, slightly smiling; 'but, say what you Hke, our
Queen reigns over the greatest nation that ever ex-
isted.'

' Which nation ? ' asked the younger stranger, ' for
she reigns over two.'

The stranger paused; Egremont was silent, but
looked inquiringly.

'Yes,' resumed the younger stranger after a mo-
ment's interval. 'Two nations; between whom there
is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as igno-
rant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as
if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabit-
ants of different planets; who are formed by a differ-
ent breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered
by different manners, and are not governed by the
same laws.'

'You speak of — ' said Egremont, hesitatingly.
'The Rich and the Poor.'

At this moment a sudden flush of rosy light, suf-
fusing the grey ruins, indicated that the sun had just
fallen; and, through a vacant arch that overlooked
them, alone in the resplendent sky, glittered the twi-
light star. The hour, the scene, the solemn stillness
and the softening beauty, repressed controversy, in-
duced even silence. The last words of the stranger
lingered in the ear of Egremont; his musing spirit
was teeming with many thoughts, many emotions;
when from the Lady's chapel there rose the evening
hymn to the Virgin. A single voice; but tones of
almost supernatural sweetness; tender and solemn, yet
flexible and thrilling.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Egremont started from his reverie. He would have
spoken, but he perceived that the elder of the strangers
had risen from his resting-place, and, with downcast
eyes and crossed arms, was on his knees. The other
remained standing in his former posture.

The divine melody ceased; the elder stranger rose;
the words were on the lips of Egremont that would
have asked some explanation of this sweet and holy
mystery, when, in the vacant and star-lit arch on
which his glance was fixed, he beheld a female form.
She was apparently in the habit of a Religious, yet
scarcely could be a nun, for her veil, if indeed it
were a veil, had fallen on her shoulders, and revealed
her thick tresses of long fair hair. The blush of deep
emotion lingered on a countenance which, though
extremely young, was impressed with a character of
almost divine majesty; while her dark eyes and long
dark lashes, contrasting with the brightness of her
complexion and the luxuriance of her radiant locks,
combined to produce a beauty as rare as it is choice;
and so strange, that Egremont might for a moment
have been pardoned for believing her a seraph, who
had lighted on this sphere, or the fair phantom of
some saint haunting the sacred ruins of her desecrated
fane.

CHAPTER XII.

Domestic Tyranny.

UNDERSTAND, then/ said Lord
Marney to his brother, as on the
evening of the same day they were
seated together in the drawing-
room, in close converse, * I under-
stand, then, that you have in fact
paid nothing, and that my mother will give you a
thousand pounds. That won't go very far.'

'It will hardly pay for the chairing,' said Egre-
mont; *the restoration of the family influence was
celebrated on so great a scale.'

'The family influence must be supported,' said
Lord Marney, 'and my mother will give you a thou-
sand pounds; as I said, that will not do much for
you, but I like her spirit. Contests are expensive
things, yet I quite approve of what you have done,
especially as you won. It is a great thing in these
ten-pound days to win your first contest, and shows
powers of calculation which I respect. Everything in
this world is calculation; there is no such thing as
luck, depend upon it; and if you go on calculating
with equal exactness, you must succeed in life. Now,
the question is, what is to be done with your election
bills?'

(95)

96 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Exactly.'

'You want to know what I will do for you, or
rather what I can do for you; that is the point. My
inclination of course is to do everything for you; but
when I calculate my resources, I may find that they
are not equal to my inclination.'

'I am sure, George, you will do everything, and
more than everything, you ought.'

' I am extremely pleased about this thousand pounds
of my mother, Charles.'

'Most admirable of her! But she always is so
generous ! '

' Her jointure has been most regularly paid,' con-
tinued Lord Marney. ' Always be exact in your pay-
ments, Charles. There is no end to the good it
produces. Now, if I had not been so regular in pay-
ing my mother her jointure, she would not in all
probability have been able to give you this thousand
pounds, and therefore, to a certain extent, you are
indebted for this thousand pounds to me.'

Egremont drew up a little, but said nothing.

' I am obliged to pay my mother her jointure,
whether ricks are burnt or not,' said Lord Marney.
'It's very hard, don't you think so?'

'But these ricks were Bingley's!'

'But he was not insured, and he will want some
reduction in his rent, and if I do not see fit to allow
it him, which I probably shall not, for he ought to
have calculated on these things, I have ricks of my
own, and they may be burnt any night.'

' But you, of course, are insured ? '

'No, I am not, I calculate 'tis better to run the risk.'

'I wonder why ricks are burnt now, and were
not in old days,' said Egremont.

SYBIL

97

* Because there is a surplus population in the
kingdom,' said Lord Marney, *and no rural police in
the county.'

'You were speaking of the election, George,' said
Egremont, not without reluctance, yet anxious, as the
ice had been broken, to bring the matter to a result.
Lord Marney, before the election, had written, in
reply to his mother consulting him on the step, a
letter with which she was delighted, but which Egre-
mont at the time could have wished to have been
more expHcit. However, in the excitement attendant
on a first contest, and influenced by the person whose
judgment always swayed, and, in the present case,
was peculiarly entitled to sway him, he stifled his
scruples, and persuaded himself that he was a candi-
date, not only with the sanction but at the instance
of his brother. 'You were speaking of the election,
George,' said Egremont.

'About the election, Charles. Well, the long and
short of it is this: that I wish to see you comforta-
ble. To be harassed about money is one of the most
disagreeable incidents of life. It ruffles the temper,
lowers the spirits, disturbs the rest, and finally breaks
up one's health. Always, if you possibly can, keep
square. And if by any chance you do find yourself
in a scrape, come to me. There is nothing under
those circumstances hke the advice of a cool-blooded
friend.'

'As valuable as the assistance of a cold-hearted
one,' thought Egremont, who did not fancy too much
the tone of this conversation.

' But there is one thing of which you must par-
ticularly beware,' continued Lord Marney, 'there is
one thing worse even than getting into difficulties —

14 B. D.— 7

98 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

patching them up. The patching-up system is fatal;
it is sure to break down; you never get clear. Now,
what I want to do for you, Charles, is to put you
right altogether. I want to see you square and more
than square, in a position which will for ever guar-
antee you from any annoyance of this kind.'

'He is a good fellow, after all,' thought Egre-
mont.

'That thousand pounds of my mother was very
apropos,' said Lord Marney; M suppose it was a sop
that will keep them all right till we have made our
arrangements.'

*0h! there is no pressure of that kind,' said Egre-
mont; Mf I see my way, and write to them, of course
they will be quite satisfied.*

'Excellent,' said Lord Marney; 'and nothing could
be more convenient to me, for, between ourselves,
my balances are very low at this moment. The awful
expenditure of keeping up this place! And then such
terrible incumbrances as I came to!'

'Incumbrances, George! Why, 1 thought you had
not any. There was not a single mortgage.'

'No mortgages; they are nothing; you find them,
you get used to them, and you calculate accordingly.
You quite forget the portions for younger children.'

'Yes; but you had plenty of ready money for
them.'

'I had to pay them though,' said Lord Marney.
' Had I not 1 might have bought Grimblethorpe with
the money; such an opportunity will never occur
again.'

'But you talked of incumbrances,' said Egremont.
'Ah! my dear fellow,' said Lord Marney, 'you don't
know what it is to have to keep up an estate like

SYBIL

99

this; and very lucky for you. It is not the easy life
you dream of. There are buildings; I am ruined in
buildings; our poor dear father thought he left me
Marney without an incumbrance; why, there was not
a barn on the whole estate that was weather-proof;
not a farm-house that was not half in ruins. What I
have spent in buildings! And draining! Though I
make my own tiles, draining, my dear fellow, is a
something of which you have not the least idea!'

'Well,', said Egremont, anxious to bring his brother
back to the point, ' you think, then, I had better write
to them and say — '

'Ah! now for your business,' said Lord Marney.
*Now, I will tell you what I can do for you. I was
speaking to Arabella about it last night; she quite ap-
proves my idea. You remember the De Mowbrays ?
Well, we are going to stay at Mowbray Castle, and
you are to go with us. It is the first time they have
received company since their great loss. Ah! you
were abroad at the time, and so you are behindhand.
Lord Mowbray's only son, Fitz-Warene, you remem-
ber him, a deuced clever fellow, he died about a year
ago, in Greece, of a fever. Never was such a blow!
His two sisters. Lady Joan and Lady Maud, are looked
upon as the greatest heiresses in the kingdom: but I
know Mowbray well; he will make an elder son of
his elder daughter. She will have it all; she is one
of Arabella's dearest friends, and you are to marry her.'

Egremont stared at his brother, who patted him on
the back with an expression of unusual kindness, add-
ing, ' You have no idea what a load this has taken
off my mind, my dear Charles; so great has my anx-
iety always been about you, particularly of late. To
see you lord of Mowbray Castle will realise my fond-

loo BENJAMIN DISRAELI

est hopes. That is a position fit for a man, and I
know none more worthy of it than yourself, though
I am your brother who say so. Now let us come
and speak to Arabella about it.'

So saying. Lord Marney, followed somewhat re-
luctantly by his brother, advanced to the other end
of the drawing-room, where his wife was employed
with her embroidery-frame, and seated next to her
young friend, Miss Poinsett, who was playing chess
with Captain Grouse, a member of the chess club, and
one of the most capital performers extant.

'Well, Arabella,' said Lord Marney, 'it is all set-
tled; Charles agrees with me about going to Mow-
bray Castle, and I think the sooner we go the better.
What do you think of the day after to-morrow ?
That will suit me exactly, and therefore I think we
had better fix on it. We will consider it settled.'

Lady Marney looked embarrassed, and a little dis-
tressed. Nothing could be more unexpected by her
than this proposition; nothing more inconvenient than
the arrangement. It was true that Lady Joan Fitz-
Warene had invited them to Mowbray, and she had
some vague intention, some day or other, of deliber-
ating whether they should avail themselves of this
kindness; but to decide upon going, and upon going
instantly, without the least consultation, the least en-
quiry as to the suitableness of the arrangement, the
visit of Miss Poinsett abruptly and ungraciously ter-
minated, for example — all this was vexatious, dis-
tressing: a mode of management which out of the
simplest incidents of domestic life contrived to extract
some degree of perplexity and annoyance.

'Do you not think, George,' said Lady Marney,
'that we had better talk it over a little?'

SYBIL

lOI

*Not at all,' said Lord Marney; 'Charles will go,
and it quite suits me, and therefore what necessity
for any consultation?'

*0h! if you and Charles like to go, certainly,* said
Lady Marney, in a hesitating tone; 'only I shall be
very sorry to lose your society.'

'How do you mean lose our society, Arabella?
Of course you must go with us. I particularly want
you to go. You are Lady Joan's most intimate friend;
I believe there is no one she likes so much.'

'I cannot go the day after to-morrow,' said Lady
fvlarney, speaking in a whisper, and looking volumes
of deprecation.

*I cannot help it,' said Lord Marney; 'you should
have told me this before. I wrote to Mowbray to-
day, that we should be with him the day after to-
morrow, and stay a week.'

'But you never mentioned it to me,' said Lady
Marney, slightly blushing, and speaking in a tone of
gentle reproach.

'I should like to know when I am to fmd time to
mention the contents of every letter I write,' said
Lord Marney: ' particularly with all the vexatious busi-
ness I have had on my hands to-day. But so it is;
the more one tries to save you trouble, the more dis-
contented you get.'

'No, not discontented, George.'

'I do not know what you call discontented: but
when a man has made every possible arrangement to
please you and everybody, and all his plans are to be
set aside, merely because the day he has fixed on does
not exactly suit your fancy, if that be not discon-
tent, I should hke very much to know what is, Ara-
bella.'

I02 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Lady Marney did not reply. Always sacrificed, al-
ways yielding, the moment she attempted to express
• an opinion, she ever seemed to assume the position,
not of the injured, but the injurer.

Arabella was a woman of abilities, which she had
cultivated. She had excellent sense, and possessed
many admirable quahties; she was far from being de-
void of sensibility; but her sweet temper shrank from
controversy, and nature had not endowed her with a
spirit which could direct and control. She yielded
without a struggle to the arbitrary will and unreason-
able caprice of a husband who was scarcely her equal
in intellect, and far her inferior in all the genial quali-
ties of our nature, but who governed her by his iron
selfishness.

Lady Marney absolutely had no will of her own.
A hard, exact, literal, bustling, acute being environed
her existence; directed, planned, settled everything.
Her life was a series of petty sacrifices and baulked
enjoyments. If her carriage were at the door, she was
never certain that she should not have to send it
away; if she had asked some friends to her house,
the chances were she should have to put them off;
if she were reading a novel, Lord Marney asked her
to copy a letter; if she were going to the opera, she
found that Lord Marney had got seats for her and
some friend in the House of Lords, and seemed ex-
pecting the strongest expressions of delight and
gratitude from her for his unasked and inconvenient
kindness. Lady Marney had struggled against this
tyranny in the earlier days of their union. Innocent,
inexperienced Lady Marney! As if it were possible
for a wife to contend against a selfish husband, at
once sharp-witted and blunt-hearted! She had ap-

SYBIL

pealed to him, she had even reproached him; she had
wept, once she had knelt. But Lord Marney looked
upon these demonstrations as the disordered sensi-
bility of a girl unused to the marriage state, and ig-
norant of the wise authority of husbands, of which
he deemed himself a model. And so, after a due
course of initiation, Lady Marney, invisible for days,
plunged in remorseful reveries in the mysteries of
her boudoir, and her lord dining at a club, and going
to the minor theatres, the countess was broken in.

Lord Marney, who was fond of chess, turned out
Captain Grouse, and gallantly proposed to finish his
game with Miss Poinsett, which Miss Poinsett, who
understood Lord Marney as well as he understood
chess, took care speedily to lose, so that his lordship
might encounter a champion worthy of him. Egre-
mont, seated by his sister-in-law, and anxious by kind
words to soothe the irritation which he had observed
with pain his brother create, entered into easy talk,
and, after some time, said, ' I find you have been
good enough to mould my destiny.'

Lady Marney looked a little surprised, and then
said, 'How so?'

'You have decided on, I hear, the most important
step of my life.'

'Indeed you perplex me.'

'Lady Joan Fitz-Warene, your friend — '

The countess blushed; the name was a clue which
she could follow, but Egremont nevertheless suspected
that the idea had never previously occurred to her.
Lady Joan she described as not beautiful; certainly not
beautiful; nobody would consider her beautiful, many
would, indeed, think her quite the reverse; and yet
she had a look, one particular look, when, according

I04 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

to Lady Marney, she was more than beautiful. But
she was very clever, very indeed, something quite
extraordinary.

' Accomplished ? '

*Oh! far beyond that; I have heard even men say
that no one knew so much.'
* A regular blue ? '

'Oh! no; not at all a blue; not that kind of
knowledge. But languages and learned books; Arabic,
and Hebrew, and old manuscripts. And then she has
an observatory, and was the first person who discov-
ered the comet. Dr. Buckland swears by her; and
she corresponds with Arago.'

' And her sister, is she the same ? '

'Lady Maud: she is very religious. I do not know
her so well.'

'Is she pretty.^'

'Some people admire her much.'
'I never was at Mowbray, what sort of a place is
it?'

'Oh! it is very grand,' said Lady Marney; 'but,
like all places in the manufacturing districts, very dis-
agreeable. You never have a clear sky. Your toilette
table is covered with blacks; the deer in the park
seem as if they had bathed in a lake of Indian ink;
and as for the sheep, you expect to see chimney-
sweeps for the shepherds.'

'And do you really mean to go on Thursday.^'
said Egremont: 'I think we had better put it off.'

'We must go,' said Lady Marney, with a sort of
sigh, and shaking her head.

'Let me speak to Marney.'

'Oh! no. We must go. I am annoyed about this
dear little Poinsett: she has been to stay with me so

SYBIL

105

very often, and she has been here only three days.
When she comes in again, I wish you would ask her
to sing, Charles.'

Soon the dear little Poinsett was singing, much
gratified by being invited to the instrument by Mr.
Egremont, who for a few minutes hung over her,
and then, evidently under the influence of her tones,
walked up and down the room, and only speaking to
beg that she would continue her charming perform-
ances. Lady Marney was engrossed with her em-
broidery; her lord and the captain with their game.

And of what was Egremont thinking .^^ Of Mow-
bray, be you sure. And of Lady Joan or Lady Maud ?
Not exactly. Mowbray was the name of the town to
which the strangers he had met with in the Abbey
were bound. It was the only piece of information
that he had been able to obtain of them; and that
casually.

When the fair vision of the starlit arch, about to
descend to her two companions, perceived that they
were in conversation with a stranger, she hesitated,
and in a moment withdrew. Then the elder of the
travellers, exchanging a glance with his friend, bade
good even to Egremont.

'Our way perhaps lies the same?' said Egremont.

M should deem not,' said the stranger, 'nor are
we alone.'

'And we must be stirring, for we have far to go,'
said he who was dressed in black.

'My journey is brief,' said Egremont, making a
desperate effort to invite communication; 'and I am
on horseback!'

'And we on foot,' said the elder; 'nor shall we
stop till we reach Mowbray;' and, with a slight

io6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

salute, they left Egremont alone. There was some-
thing in the manner of the elder stranger which
repressed the possibility of Egremont following him.
Leaving then the cloister garden in another direction,
he speculated on meeting them outside the Abbey.
He passed through the Lady's chapel. The beautiful
Religious was not there. He gained the west front;
no one was visible. He took a rapid survey of each
side of the Abbey; not a being to be recognised. He
fancied they must have advanced towards the Abbey
farm; yet they might have proceeded further on in
the dale. Perplexed, he lost time. Finally he pro-
ceeded towards the farm, but did not overtake them;
reached it, but learned nothing of them; and arrived
at his brother's full of a strange yet sweet perplexity.

CHAPTER XIII.

Transformation of a Waiter
TO A Nabob.

5 V.^i^#^"^w^°'5 N A commercial country like Eng-
land, every half century develops
some new and vast source of pub-
lic wealth, which brings into na-
tional notice a new and powerful
class. A couple of centuries ago,
a turkey merchant was the great creator of wealth; the
West India planter followed him. In the middle of the
last century appeared the nabob. These characters in
their zenith in turn merged in the land, and became
Enghsh aristocrats; while, the Levant decaying, the
West Indies exhausted, and Hindostan plundered, the
breeds died away, and now exist only in our English
comedies, from Wycherly and Congreve to Cumber-
land and Morton. The expenditure of the revolutionary
war produced the loanmonger, who succeeded the
nabob; and the application of science to industry
developed the manufacturer, who in turn aspires to
be Marge acred,' and always will, so long as we
have a territorial constitution ; a better security for the
preponderance of the landed interest than any corn-
law, fixed or fluctuating.

Of all these characters, the one that on the whole
made the largest fortunes in the most rapid manner,

(107;

io8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

and we do not forget the marvels of the Waterloo
loan, or the miracles of Manchester during the Con-
tinental blockade, was the Anglo-East-lndian about the
time that Hastings was first appointed to the great
viceroyalty. It was not unusual for men in positions
so obscure that their names had never reached the
public in this country, and who yet had not been
absent from their native land for a longer period
than the siege of Troy, to return with their million.

One of the most fortunate of this class of obscure
adventurers was a certain John Warren. A few years
before the breaking out of the American war, he was
a waiter at a celebrated club in St. James' Street; a
quick, yet steady young fellow; assiduous, discreet,
and very civil. In this capacity, he pleased a gentle-
man who was just appointed to the government of
Madras, and who wanted a valet. Warren, though
prudent, was adventurous; and accepted the opening
which he believed fortune offered him. He was
prescient. The voyage in those days was an affair of
six months. During this period. Warren still more
ingratiated himself with his master. He wrote a good
hand, and his master a very bad one. He had a
natural talent for accounts; a kind of information
which was useful to his employer. He arrived at
Madras, no longer a valet, but a private secretary.

His master went out to make a fortune; but he was
indolent and had indeed none of the quahties for suc-
cess, except his great position. Warren had every qual-
ity but that. The basis of the confederacy therefore
was intelligible; it was founded on mutual interests and
cemented by reciprocal assistance. The governor
granted monopolies to the secretary, who app ortioned a
due share to his sleeping partner. There appeared one

SYBIL

of those dearths not unusual in Hindostan; the popula-
tion of the famished province cried out for rice; the
stores of which, diminished by nature, had for months
mysteriously disappeared. A provident administration
it seems had invested the pubhc revenue in its be-
nevolent purchase; the misery was so excessive that
even pestilence was anticipated, when the great fore-
stallers came to the rescue of the people over whose
destinies they presided; and at the same time fed, and
pocketed, milHons.

This was the great stroke of the financial genius
of Warren. He was satisfied. He longed once more
to see St. James' Street, and to become a member of
the club where he had once been a waiter. But he
was the spoiled child of fortune, who would not so
easily spare him. The governor died, and appointed
his secretary his sole executor. Not that his Excel-
lency particularly trusted his agent, but he dared not
confide the knowledge of his affairs to any other in-
dividual. The estate was so complicated that War-
ren offered the heirs a good round sum for his
quittance, and to take the settlement upon himself
India so distant, and Chancery so near, the heirs ac-
cepted the proposition. Winding up this estate. War-
ren avenged the cause of plundered provinces; and
the House of Commons itself, with Burke and Francis
at its head, could scarcely have mulcted the late gov-
ernor more severely.

A Mr. Warren, of whom no one had ever heard
except that he was a nabob, had recently returned
from India, and purchased a large estate in the north
of England; was returned to Parliament one of the
representatives of a close borough which he had also
purchased; a quiet, gentlemanlike, middle-aged man.

no BENJAMIN DISRAELI

with no decided political opinions; and, as parties
were then getting equal, of course much courted.
The throes of Lord North's administration were com-
mencing. The minister asked the new member to
dine with him, and found the new member singularly
free from all party prejudices. Mr. Warren was one
of those members who announced their determination
to listen to the debates and to be governed by the
arguments. All complimented him, all spoke to him.
Mr. Fox declared that he was a most superior man;
Mr. Burke said that these were the men who could
alone save the country. Mrs. Crewe asked him to
supper; he was caressed by the most brilliant of
duchesses.

At length there arrived one of those fierce trials of
strength, which precede the fall of a minister, but
which sometimes, from peculiar circumstances, as in
the instances of Walpole and Lord North, are not
immediate in their results. How would Warren vote.^
was the great question. He would listen to the argu-
ments. Burke was full of confidence that he should
catch Warren. The day before the debate there was
a levee, which Mr. Warren attended. The Sovereign
stopped him, spoke to him, smiled on him, asked
him many questions: about himself, the House of
Commons, how he liked it, how he liked England.
There was a flutter in the circle; a new favourite at
court.

The debate came off, the division took place. Mr.
Warren voted for the minister. Burke denounced
him; the king made him a baronet.

Sir John Warren made a great alliance, at least for
him; he married the daughter of an Irish earl; became
one of the king's friends; supported Lord Shelburne,

SYBIL

III

threw over Lord Shelburne, had the tact early to dis-
cover that Mr. Pitt was the man to stick to; stuck to
him. Sir John Warren bought another estate, and
picked up another borough. He was fast becoming a
personage. Throughout the Indian debates he kept
himself quiet; once indeed in vindication of Mr. Has-
tings, whom he greatly admired, he ventured to cor-
rect Mr. Francis on a point of fact with which he was
personally acquainted. He thought that it was safe,
but he never spoke again. He knew not the resources
of vindictive genius or the powers of a malignant
imagination. Burke owed the nabob a turn for the
vote which had gained him a baronetcy. The orator
seized the opportunity, and alarmed the secret con-
science of the Indian adventurer by his dark allusions
and his fatal familiarity with the subject.

Another estate, however, and another borough
were some consolation for this little misadventure;
and in time the French Revolution, to Sir John's great
relief, turned the public attention for ever from Indian
affairs. The nabob, from the faithful adherent of Mr.
Pitt, had become even his personal friend. The wits,
indeed, had discovered that he had been a waiter;
and endless were the epigrams of Fitzpatrick and the
jokes of Hare; but Mr. Pitt cared nothing about the
origin of his supporters. On the contrary. Sir John was
exactly the individual from whom the minister meant
to carve out his plebeian aristocracy; and, using his
friend as a feeler before he ventured on his greater
operations, the nabob one morning was transformed
into an Irish baron.

The new Baron figured in his patent as Lord Fitz-
Warene, his Norman origin and descent from the old
barons of this name having been discovered at Heralds'

112 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

College. This was a rich harvest for Fitzpatrick and
Hare; but the public gets accustomed to everything,
and has an easy habit of faith. The new Baron cared
nothing for ridicule, for he was working for posterity.
He was compensated for every annoyance by the re-
membrance that the St. James' Street waiter was en-
nobled, and by his determination that his children
should rank still higher in the proud peerage of his
country. So he obtained the royal permission to re-
sume the surname and arms of his ancestors, as well
as their title.

There was an ill-natured story set afloat that Sir
John owed this promotion to having lent money to
the minister; but this was a calumny. Mr. Pitt never
borrowed money of his friends. Once, indeed, to save
his library, he took a thousand pounds from an indi-
vidual on whom he had conferred high rank and im-
mense promotion: and this individual, who had the
minister's bond when Mr. Pitt died, insisted on his
right, and actually extracted the i,ooo/. from the in-
solvent estate of his magnificent patron. But Mr. Pitt
always preferred a usurer to a friend; and to the last
day of his life borrowed money at fifty per cent.

The nabob departed this life before the minister,
but he lived long enough to realise his most aspiring
dream. Two years before his death, the Irish baron
was quietly converted into an English peer; and with-
out exciting any attention, all the squibs of Fitz-
patrick, all the jokes of Hare, quite forgotten, the
waiter of the St. James' Street club took his seat in
the most natural manner possible in the House of
Lords.

The great estate of the late Lord Fitz-Warene was
situate at Mowbray, a village which principally be-

SYBIL'

"3

longed to him, and near which he had raised a Gothic
castle, worthy of his Norman name and ancestry.
Mowbray was one of those places which, during the
long war, had expanded from an almost unknown
village to a large and flourishing manufacturing town ;
a circumstance which, as Lady Marney observed,
might have somewhat deteriorated the atmosphere of
the splendid castle, but which had nevertheless trebled
the vast rental of its lord. He who had succeeded to
his father was Altamont Belvedere, named after his
mother's family, Fitz-Warene, Lord Fitz-Warene. He
was not deficient in abilities, though he had not his
father's talents, but he was over-educated for his in-
tellect; a common misfortune. The new Lord Fitz-
Warene was the most aristocratic of breathing beings.
He most fully, entirely, and absolutely believed in his
pedigree; his coat-of-arms was emblazoned on every
window, embroidered on every chair, carved in every
corner. Shortly after his father's death, he was united
to the daughter of a ducal house, by whom he had a
son and two daughters, christened by names which
the ancient records of the Fitz-Warenes authorised.
His son, who gave promise of abilities which might
have rendered the family really distinguished, was
Valence; his daughters, Joan and Maud. All that
seemed wanting to the glory of the house was a great
distinction, of which a rich peer, with six seats in
the House of Commons, could not ultimately despair.
Lord Fitz-Warene aspired to rank among the earls of
England. But the successors of Mr, Pitt were strong;
they thought the Fitz-Warenes had already been too
rapidly advanced; it was whispered that the king did
not like the new man; that his Majesty thought him
pompous, full of pretence, in short, a fool. But though

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114 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

the successors of Mr. Pitt managed to govern the
country for twenty years, and were generally very
strong, in such an interval of time, however good
their management or great their luck, there were in-
evitably occasions when they found themselves in
difficulties, when it was necessary to conciliate the
lukewarm or to reward the devoted. Lord Fitz-War-
ene well understood how to avail himself of these
occasions: it was astonishing how conscientious and
scrupulous he became during Walcheren expeditions,
Manchester massacres, Queen's trials. Every scrape
of the government was a step in the ladder to the
great borough-monger. The old king, too, had disap-
peared from the stage; and the tawdry grandeur of
the great Norman peer rather suited George the Fourth.
He was rather a favourite at the Cottage; they wanted
his six votes for Canning; he made his terms; and
one of the means by which we got a man of genius
for a minister was elevating Lord Fitz-Warene in the
peerage, by the style and title of Earl de Mowbray of
Mowbray Castle.

CHAPTER XIV.
The Fair Religious.

E MUST now for a while return to
the strangers of the Abbey ruins.
When the two men had joined the
beautiful Religious, whose appari-
tion had so startled Egremont, they
all three quitted the Abbey by a way
which led them by the back of the cloister garden, and
so on by the bank of the river for about a hundred
yards, when they turned up the winding glen of a
dried-up tributary stream. At the head of the glen,
at which they soon arrived, was a beer-shop, screened
by some huge elms from the winds that blew over
the vast moor, which, except in the direction of Mar-
dale, now extended as far as the eye could reach.
Here the companions stopped, the beautiful Religious
seated herself on a stone bench beneath the trees,
while the elder stranger, calling out to the inmate of
the house to apprise him of his return, himself pro-
ceeded to a neighbouring shed, whence he brought
forth a small rough pony, with a rude saddle, but
one evidently intended for a female rider.

*It is well,' said the taller of the men, 'that I am
not a member of a temperance society like you, Ste-

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ii6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

phen, or it would be difficult to reward this good
man for his care of our steed. I will take a cup of
the drink of Saxon kings.' Then leading up the pony
to the Religious, he placed her on its back with gen-
tleness and much natural grace, saying at the same
time in a subdued tone, 'And you; shall I bring you
a glass of nature's wine?*

'I have drunk of the spring of the Holy Abbey,'
said the Religious, 'and none other must touch my
lips this eve.*

'Come, our course must be brisk,' said the elder
of the men, as he gave up his glass to their host and
led off the pony, Stephen walking on the other side.

Though the sun had fallen, the twilight was still
glowing, and even on this wide expanse the air was
still. The vast and undulating surface of the brown
and purple moor, varied occasionally by some fantas-
tic rocks, gleamed in the shifting light. Hesperus
was the only star that yet was visible, and seemed
to move before them and lead them on their journey.

'I hope,' said the Religious, turning to the elder
stranger, * if ever we regain our right, my father, and
that we ever can, save by the interposition of divine
will, seems to me clearly impossible, that you will
never forget how bitter it is to be driven from the
soil; and that you will bring back the people to the
land.'

'I would pursue our right for no other cause,' said
the father. 'After centuries of sorrow and degrada-
tion, it should never be said that we had no sympa-
thy with the sad and the oppressed.'

'After centuries of sorrow and degradation,' said
Stephen, 'let it not be said that you acquire your
right only to create a baron or a squire.*

SYBIL

117

*Nay, thou shalt have thy way, Stephen,' said his
companion, smiling, 'if ever the good hour come. As
many acres as thou choosest for thy new Jerusa-
lem/

'Call it what you will, Walter,' replied Stephen;
'but if I ever gain the opportunity of fully carrying
the principle of association into practice, I will sing
Nunc me dimities.'

'Nunc me dimities,' burst forth the Religious,
in a voice of thrilling melody, and she pursued for
some minutes the divine canticle. Her companions
gazed on her with an air of affectionate reverence as
she sang; each instant the stars becoming brighter,
the wide moor assuming a darker hue.

'Now, tell me, Stephen,' said the Religious, turn-
ing her head and looking round with a smile, 'think
you not it would be a fairer lot to bide this night at
some kind monastery, than to be hastening now to
that least picturesque of all creations, a railway sta-
tion ?'

'The railways will do as much for mankind as
the monasteries did,' said Stephen.

' Had it not been for the railway, we should never
have made our visit to Marney Abbey,' said the elder
of the travellers.

'Nor seen its last abbot's tomb,' said the Religious.
'When I marked your name upon the stone, my
father, — woe is me, but I felt sad indeed, that it was
reserved for our blood to surrender to ruthless men
that holy trust.'

'He never surrendered,* said her father. 'He was
tortured and hanged.'

'He is with the communion of saints,' said the
Religious.

ii8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'I would I could see a communion of men,' said
Stephen, 'and then there would be no more violence,
for there would be no more plunder.'

'You must regain our lands for us, Stephen,' said
the Religious; 'promise me, my father, that I shall
raise a holy house for pious women, if that ever hap.'

'We will not forget our ancient faith,' said her
father, 'the only old thing that has not left us.'

'1 cannot understand,' said Stephen, 'why you
should ever have lost sight of these papers, Walter.'

' You see, friend, they were never in my posses-
sion; they were never mine when I saw them. They
were my father's; and he was jealous of all interfer-
ence. He was a small yeoman, who had risen in
the war time, well-to-do in the world, but always
hankering after the old tradition that the lands were
ours. This Hatton got hold of him; he did his work
well, I have heard; — certain it is, my father spared
nothing. It is twenty-five years come Martinmas
since he brought his writ of right; and though baf-
fled, he was not beaten. But then he died; his af-
fairs were in great confusion; he had mortgaged his
land for his writ, and the war prices were gone.
There were debts that could not be paid. I had no
capital for a farm. I would not sink to be a labourer
on the soil that had once been our own. I had just
married; it was needful to make a great exertion. I
had heard much of the high wages of this new in-
dustry; 1 left the land.'

'And the papers?'

' I never thought of them, or thought of them with
disgust, as the cause of my ruin. Then when you
came the other day, and showed me in the book that
the last Abbot of Marney was a Walter Gerard, the

SYBIL

119

old feeling stirred again; and I could not help telling
you that my fathers fought at Azincourt, though 1
was only the overlooker at Mr. Trafford's mill.'

'A good old name of the good old faith,' said the
Religious; 'and a blessing be on it!'

'We have cause to bless it/ said Gerard. M
thought it then something to serve a gentleman; and
as for my daughter, she, by their goodness, was
brought up in holy walls, which have made her what
she is.'

'Nature made her what she is,' said Stephen, in a
low voice, and speaking not without emotion. Then he
continued, in a louder and brisker tone, 'But this
Hatton; you know nothing of his whereabouts.?'

'Never heard of him since. I had indeed, about a
year after my father's death, cause to enquire after
him; but he had quitted Mowbray, and none could
give me tidings of him. He had lived, I believe, on
our lawsuit, and vanished with our hopes.'

After this there was silence; each was occupied
with his thoughts, while the influence of the soft
night and starry hour induced to contemplation.

'I hear the murmur of the train,' said the Reli-
gious.

"Tis the up-train,' said her father. 'We have yet
a quarter of an hour; we shall be in good time.'

So saying, he guided the pony to where some
lights indicated the station of the railway, which here
crossed the moor. There was just time to return the
pony to the person at the station from whom it had
been borrowed, and obtain their tickets, when the
bell of the down-train sounded, and in a few minutes
the Religious and her companions were on their way to
Mowbray, whither a course of two hours carried them.

I20 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

It was two hours to midnight when they arrived
at Mowbray station, which was about a quarter of a
mile from the town. Labour had long ceased; a
beautiful heaven, clear and serene, canopied the city
of smoke and toil; in all directions rose the columns
of the factories, dark and defined in the purple sky; a
glittering star sometimes hovering by the crest of their
tall and tapering forms.

The travellers proceeded in the direction of a sub-
urb, and approached the high wall of an extensive
garden. The moon rose as they reached it, tipped
the trees with light, and revealed a lofty and centre
portal, by the side of it a wicket, at which Gerard
rang. The wicket was quickly opened.

'I fear, holy sister,' said the Religious, 'that I am
even later than I promised.'

'Those that come in our Lady's name are ever
welcome,' was the reply.

'Sister Marion,' said Gerard to the portress, 'we
have been to visit a holy place.'

' All places are holy with holy thoughts, my
brother.'

'Dear father, good night,' said the Religious; 'the
blessings of all the saints be on thee; and on thee,
Stephen, though thou dost not kneel to them!'

'Good night, mine own child,' said Gerard.

'I could believe in saints when I am with thee,'
murmured Stephen. 'Good night,— Sybil.'

CHAPTER XV.

Young Blood.

HEN Gerard and his friend quitted
^ the convent they proceeded at a
brisk pace into the heart of the
town. The streets were nearly
empty; and, with the exception of
some occasional burst of brawl or
merriment from a beer-shop, all was still. The chief
street of Mowbray, called Castle Street, after the ruins
of the old baronial stronghold in its neighbourhood,
was as significant of the present civilisation of this
community as the haughty keep had been of its ancient
dependence. The dimensions of Castle Street were
not unworthy of the metropolis: it traversed a great
portion of the town, and was proportionately wide;
its broad pavements and its blazing gas-lights indicated
its modern order and prosperity; while on each side
of the street rose huge warehouses, not as beautiful
as the palaces of Venice, but in their way not less
remarkable; magnificent shops; and, here and there,
though rarely, some ancient factory built among the
fields in the infancy of Mowbray by some mill-owner
not sufficiently prophetic of the future, or sufficiently
confident in the energy and enterprise of his fellow-

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122 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

citizens, to foresee that the scene of his labours
would be the future eyesore of a flourishing poster-
ity.

Pursuing their course along Castle Street for about
a quarter of a mile, Gerard and Stephen turned down
a street which intersected it, and so on, through a
variety of ways and winding lanes, till they arrived
at an open portion of the town, a district where
streets and squares, and even rows, disappeared, and
where the tall chimneys and bulky barrack-looking
buildings that rose in all directions, clustering yet
isolated, announced that they were in the principal
scene of the industry of Mowbray. Crossing this
open ground, they gained a suburb, but one of a
very different kind from that in which was situate
the convent where they had parted with Sybil. This
one was populous, noisy, and lighted. It was Satur-
day night; the streets were thronged; an infinite
population kept swarming to and from the close
courts and pestilential cul-de-sacs that continually
communicated with the streets by narrow archways,
like the entrance of hives, so low that you were
obliged to stoop for admission: while ascending to
these same streets from their dank and dismal dwell-
ings by narrow flights of steps, the subterraneous
nation of the cellars poured forth to enjoy the cool-
ness of the summer night, and market for the day of
rest. The bright and lively shops were crowded; and
groups of purchasers were gathered round the stalls,
that, by the aid of glaring lamps and flaunting lanterns,
displayed their wares.

'Come, come, it's a prime piece,' said a jolly-
looking woman, who was presiding at a stall which,
though considerably thinned by previous purchasers,

SYBIL

123

still ofifered many temptations to many who could
not purchase.

'And so it is, widow,' said a little pale man,
wistfully.

*Come, come, it's getting late, and your wife's
ill; you're a good soul, we'll say fi'pence a pound,
and ril throw you the scrag end in for love.'

'No butcher's meat to-morrow for us, widow,'
said the man.

'And why not, neighbour? with your wages, you
ought to live like a prize-fighter, or the Mayor of
Mowbray at least.'

'Wages!' said the man: 'I wish you may get
'em. Those villains. Shuffle and Screw, have sarved
me with another bate ticket; and a pretty figure too.'

'Oh! the carnal monsters!' exclaimed the widow.
'If their day don't come, the bloody-minded knaves!'

'And for small cops, too! Small cops be hanged!
Am I the man to send up a bad-bottomed cop.
Widow Carey?'

'You sent up for snicks! I have known you man
and boy, John Hill, these twenty summers, and never
heard a word against you till you got into Shuffle
and Screw's mill. Oh! they are a bad yarn, John.'

'They do us all, widow. They pretends to give
the same wages as the rest, and works it out in fines.
You can't come, and you can't go, but there's a fine;
you're never paid wages but there's a bate ticket.
I've heard they keep their whole establishment on
factory fines.'

' Soul alive, but those Shuffle and Screw are rot-
ten, snickey, bad yarns,' said Mistress Carey. 'Now,
ma'am, if you please; fi'pence ha'penny; no, ma'am,
we've no weal left. Weal, indeed! you look wery

124 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

like a soul as feeds on weal/ continued Mrs. Carey in
an undertone as her declining customer moved away.
'Well, it gets late,' said the widow, 'and if you like
to take this scrag end home to your wife, neigh-
bour Hill, we can talk of the rest next Saturday. And
what's your will, Sir?' said the widow, with a stern
expression, to a youth who now stopped at her stall.

He was about sixteen, with a lithe figure, and a
handsome, faded, impudent face. His long, loose
white trousers gave him height; he had no waistcoat,
but a pink silk handkerchief was twisted carelessly
round his neck, and fastened with a large pin, which,
whatever were its materials, had unquestionably a
gorgeous appearance. A loose frock-coat of a coarse
white cloth, and fastened by one button round his
waist, completed his habiliments, with the addition
of the covering to his head, a high-crowned dark-
brown hat, which relieved his complexion, and
heightened the effect of his mischievous blue eye.

'Well you need not be so fierce. Mother Carey,'
said the youth, with an affected air of deprecation.

'Don't mother me,' said the jolly widow, with a
kindhng eye; 'go to your own mother, who is dying
in a back cellar without a winder, while you've got
lodgings in a two-pair.'

'Dying! she's only drunk,' said the youth.

'And if she is only drunk,' rejoined Mrs. Carey, in
a passion, 'what makes her drink but toil? working
from five o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock at
night, and for the like of such as you.'

'That's a good one,' said the youth. 'I should
like to know what my mother ever did for me, but
give me treacle and laudanum when I was a baby to
stop my tongue and fill my stomach; by the token of

SYBIL

which, as rny gal says, she stunted the growth of
the prettiest figure in all Mowbray.' And here the
youth drew himself up, and thrust his hands in the
side pockets of his pea-jacket.

'Well, I never!' said Mrs. Carey. 'No; I never
heard a thing like that!'

' What, not when you cut up the jackass and sold
it for veal cutlets, mother?'

' Hold your tongue, Mr. Imperence,' said the widow.
' It's very well known you're no Christian, and who'll
believe what you say?'

'It's very well known that I'm a man what pays
his way,' said the boy, 'and don't keep a huckster's
stall to sell carrion by starlight; but live in a two-pair,
if you please, and has a wife and family, or as good.'

' Oh ! you aggravating imp ! ' exclaimed the widow,
in despair, unable to wreak her vengeance on one
who kept in a secure position, and whose movements
were as nimble as his words.

' Why, Madam Carey, what has Dandy Mick done
to thee ? ' said a good-humoured voice. It came from
one of two factory girls who were passing her stall,
and stopped. They were gaily dressed, a light hand-
kerchief tied under the chin, their hair scrupulously
arranged; they wore coral necklaces and earrings of
gold.

'Ah! is it you, my child?' said the widow, who
was a good-hearted creature. 'The dandy has been
giving me some of his imperence.'

'But I meant nothing, dame,' said Mick. 'It was
fun; only fun.'

'Well, let it pass,' said Mrs. Carey. *And where
have you been this long time, my child ? And who's
your friend?' she added, in a lower tone.

126 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Well, I have left Mr. Trafford's mill,' said the
girl.

'That's a bad job,' said Mrs. Carey; 'for those
Traffords are kind to their people. It's a great thing
for a young person to be in their mill.'

'So it is,' said the girl; 'but then it was so dull.
1 can't stand a country life, Mrs. Carey. I must have
company.'

'Well, I do love a bit of gossip myself,' said Mrs.
Carey, with great frankness.

'And then I'm no scholar,' said the girl, 'and never
could take to learning. And those Traffords had so
many schools.'

'Learning is better than house and land,' said
Mrs. Carey, 'though I'm no scholar myself; but then
in my time things was different. But young per-
sons— '

'Yes,' said Mick; 'I don't think I could get through
the day if it wurno' for our Institute.'

'And what's that.?' asked Mrs. Carey, with a sneer.

'The Shoddy-Court Literary and Scientific, to be
sure,' said Mick; 'we have got fifty members, and
take in three London papers; one "Northern Star"
and two "Moral Worlds."'

'And where are you now, child?' continued the
widow to the girl.

'I am at Wiggins and Webster's,' said the girl;
'and this is my partner. We keep house together;
we have a very nice room in Arbour Court, No. 7,
high up; it's very airy. If you will take a dish of tea
with us to-morrow, we expect some friends.'

'I take it kindly,' said Mrs. Carey; 'and so you
keep house together! All the children keep house in
these days. Times is changed indeed!'

SYBIL

127

*And we shall be happy to see you, Mick; and
Julia, if you are not engaged,' continued the girl; and
she looked at her friend, a pretty demure girl, who
immediately said, but in a somewhat faltering tone,
*0h! that we shall.'

'And what are you going to do now, Caroline?'
said Mick.

'Well, we had no thoughts; but I said to Harriet,
as it is a fine night, let us walk about as long as we
can, and then to-morrow we will lie in bed till after-
noon.'

'That's all well eno' in winter-time, with plenty
of baccy,' said Mick, 'but at this season of the year
I must have life. The moment I came out I bathed
in the river, and then went home and dressed,' he
added in a satisfied tone; 'and now I am going to
the Temple. I'll tell you what, Julia has been pricked
to-day with a shuttle; 'tis not much, but she can't go
out: I'll stand treat, and take you and your friend to
the Temple.'

'Well, that's delight,' said Caroline. 'There's no
one does the handsome thing like you. Dandy Mick,
and I always say so. Oh! I love the Temple! 'Tis
so genteel! I was speaking of it to Harriet last night;
she never was there. I proposed to go with her, but
two girls alone — you understand me. One does not
like to be seen in these places, as if one kept no
company.'

'Very true,' said Mick; 'and now we'll be off.
Good night, widow.'

'You'll remember us to-morrow evening,' said
CaroHne.

'To-morrow evening! The Temple!' murmured
Mrs. Carey to herself. '1 think the world is turned

128

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

upside downwards in these parts. A brat like Mick
Radley to live in a two-pair, with a wife and family,
or as good, as he says; and this girl asks me to take
a dish of tea with her and keeps house! Fathers and
mothers goes for nothing,' continued Mrs. Carey, as
she took a very long pinch of snuff, and deeply
mused. *'Tis the children gets the wages,' she added
after a profound pause, *and there it is.'

CHAPTER XVI.

Devilsdust.

N THE meantime Gerard and Stephen
stopped before a tall, thin, stuccoed
house, balustraded and friezed,
very much lighted both within
y and without, and from the sounds
that issued from it, and the per-

sons who retired and entered, evidently a locahty of
great resort and bustle. A sign, bearing the title of
the Cat and Fiddle, indicated that it was a place
of public entertainment, and kept by one who owned
the legal name of John Trottman, though that was
but a vulgar appellation, lost in his well-earned and
far-famed title of Chaffmg Jack.

The companions entered the spacious premises;
and, making their way to the crowded bar, Stephen,
with a glance serious but which indicated intimacy,
caught the eye of a comely lady, who presided over
the mysteries, and said in a low voice, 'Is he here.?'

'In the Temple, Mr. Morley, asking for you and
your friend more than once. I think you had better
go up. I know he wishes to see you.'

Stephen whispered to Gerard, and after a mo-
ment's pause he asked the fair president for a couple

14 B.D.-<, (129)

130 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

of tickets, for each of which he paid threepence; a
sum, however, according to the printed declaration
of the voucher, convertible into potential liquid re-
freshments, no great compensation to a very strict
member of the Temperance Society of Mowbray.

A handsome staircase with bright brass banisters
led them to an ample landing-place, on which opened
a door, now closed, and by which sat a boy who
collected the tickets of those who would enter it.
The portal was of considerable dimensions and of
architectural pretension; it was painted of a bright
green colour, the panels gilt. Within the pediment,
described in letters of flaming gas you read, ' The
Temple of the Muses.'

Gerard and Morley entered an apartment very long
and sufficiently lofty, though rather narrow for such
proportions. The ceiling was even richly decorated;
the walls were painted, and by a brush of no incon-
siderable power. Each panel represented some well-
known scene from Shakespeare, Byron, or Scott; King
Richard, Mazeppa, the Lady of the Lake, were easily
recognised: in one panel, Hubert menaced Arthur; here
Haidee rescued Juan; and there Jeanie Deans curtsied be-
fore the Queen. The room was very full; some three
or four hundred persons were seated in different groups
at different tables, eating, drinking, talking, laughing,
and even smoking; for, notwithstanding the pictures
and the gilding, it was found impossible to forbid,
though there were efforts to discourage, this practice,
in the Temple of the Muses. Nothing, however, could
be more decorous than the general conduct of the com-
pany, though they consisted principally of factory people.

The waiters flew about with as much agility as
if they were serving nobles. In general the noise

SYBIL

was great, though not disagreeable; sometimes a bell
rang, and there was comparative silence, while a cur-
tain drew up at the farther end of the room, opposite
to the entrance, where there was a theatre, the stage
raised at a due elevation, and adorned with side
scenes, from which issued a lady in a fancy dress,
who sang a favourite ballad; or a gentleman elabo-
rately habited in a farmer's costume of the old comedy,
a bob-wig, silver buttons and buckles, and blue stock-
ings, and who favoured the company with that mel-
ancholy effusion called a comic song. Some nights
there was music on the stage; a young lady in a
white robe with a golden harp, and attended by a
gentleman in black mustachios. This was when the
principal harpiste of the King of Saxony and his first
fiddler happened to be passing through Mowbray,
merely by accident, or on a tour of pleasure and in-
struction, to witness the famous scenes of British
industry. Otherwise the audience of the Cat and
Fiddle, we mean the Temple of the Muses, were fain
to be content with four Bohemian brothers, or an
equal number of Swiss sisters. The most popular
amusements, however, were the 'Thespian recitations,'
by amateurs, or novices who wished to become pro-
fessional. They tried their metal on an audience
which could be critical.

A sharp waiter, with a keen eye on the entering
guests, immediately saluted Gerard and his friend,
with profuse offers of hospitality, insisting that they
wanted much refreshment; that they were both
hungry and thirsty; that, if not hungry, they should
order something to drink that would give them an
appetite; if not inclined to quaff, something to eat
that would make them athirst. In the midst of these

132 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

embarrassing attentions, he was pushed aside by his
master with, 'There, go; hands wanted at the upper
end; two American gentlemen from Lowell singing
out for sherry cobbler; don't know what it is; give
them our bar-mixture; if they complain, say it's the
Mowbray slap-bang, and no mistake. Must have a
name, Mr. Morley; name's everything; made the
fortune of the Temple; if I had called it the Saloon,
it never would have filled, and perhaps the magistrates
never have granted a licence.'

The speaker was a portly man, who had passed
the maturity of manhood, but active as Harlequin.
He had a well-favoured countenance; fair, good-
humoured, but sly. He was dressed hke the head
butler of the London Tavern, and was particular as to
his white waistcoats and black silk stockings, punctili-
ous as to his knee-buckles, proud of his diamond pin;
that is to say, when he officiated at the Temple.

'Your mistress told us we should find you here,'
said Stephen, 'and that you wished to see us.'

'Plenty to tell you,' said their host, putting his
finger to his nose. 'If information is wanted in this
part of the world, I flatter myself — Come, Master
Gerard, here's a table; what shall I call for? glass of
the Mowbray slap-bang.? No better; the receipt has
been in our family these fifty years. Mr. Morley I
know won't join us. Did you say a cup of tea, Mr.
Morley? Water, only water; well, that's strange.
Boy, alive there! do you hear me call? Water
wanted, glass of water for the Secretary of the Mowbray
Temperance and Teetotal. Sing it out. I like titled
company. Brush!'

'And so you can give us some information about
this — '

SYBIL

133

*Be back directly,' exclaimed their host, darting
off with a swift precision that carried him through a
labyrinth of tables without the slightest inconvenience
to their occupiers. 'Beg pardon, Mr. Morley/ he
said, sliding again into his chair; *but saw one of
the American gentlemen brandishing his bowie-knife
against one of my waiters; called him Colonel; quieted
him directly; a man of his rank brawling with a
help; oh! no; not to be thought of; no squabbling
here; licence in danger.*

*You were saying — ' resumed Morley.

*Ah! yes^ about that man Hatton; remember him
perfectly well; a matter of twenty, or it may be
nineteen years since he bolted. Queer fellow; lived
upon nothing; only drank water; no temperance and
teetotaj then, so no excuse. Beg pardon, Mr. Morley;
no offence, I hope; can't bear whims; but respectable
societies, if they don't drink, they make speeches,
hire your rooms, leads to business.'

'And this Hatton?' said Gerard.

'Ah! a queer fellow; lent him a one-pound note;
never saw it again; always remember it; last one-
pound note I had. He offered me an old book
instead; not in my way; took a china jar for my
wife. He kept a curiosity shop; always prowling
about the country, picking up old books and hunting
after old monuments; called himself an antiquarian;
queer fellow, that Hatton.'

'And you have heard of him since?' said Gerard
rather impatiently.

'Not a word,' said their host; 'never knew any
one who had.'

' I thought you had something to tell us about
him,' said Stephen.

134 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'So I have: I can put you in the way of getting
hold of him and anything else. I haven't lived in
Mowbray man and boy for fifty years; seen it a vil-
lage, and now a great town full of first-rate institu-
tions and establishments like this,' added their host,
surveying the Temple with a glance of admiring com-
placency; 'Isay I haven't lived here all this time and
talked to the people for nothing.'

'Well, we are all attention,' said Gerard with a
smile.

'Hush!' said their host as a bell sounded, and he
jumped up. 'Now ladies, now gentlemen, if you
please; silence if you please, for a song from a Polish
lady. The Signora sings English like a new-born
babe;' and the curtain drew up amid the hushed
voices of the company and the restrained clatter of
their knives and forks and glasses.

The Polish lady sang 'Cherry Ripe' to the infinite
satisfaction of her audience. Young Mowbray indeed,
in the shape of Dandy Mick, and some of his follow-
ers and admirers, insisted on an encore. The lady,
as she retired, curtsied like a prima donna; but the
host continued on his legs for some time, throwing
open his coat and bowing to his guests, who ex-
pressed by their applause how much they approved
his enterprise. At length he resumed his seat. 'It's
almost too much,' he exclaimed; 'the enthusiasm of
these people. I believe they look upon me as a
father.'

'And you think you have some clue to this Hat-
ton?' resumed Stephen.

'They say he has no relations,' said their host.
'I have heard as much.'

'Another glass of the bar-mixture. Master Gerard-

SYBIL

What did we call it? Oh! the bricks and beans; the
Mowbray bricks and beans; known by that name
in the time of my grandfather. No more! No use
asking Mr. Morley, I know. Water! well, I must
say; and yet, in an official capacity, drinking water
is not so unnatural.'

'And Hatton,' said Gerard; 'they say he has no
relations.'

'They do, and they say wrong. He has a rela-
tion; he has a brother; and I can put you in the way
of finding him.'

'Well, that looks like business,' said Gerard; 'and
where may he be ? '

'Not here,' said their host; 'he never put his
foot in the Temple, to my knowledge; and lives
in a place where they have as much idea of popu-
lar institutions as any Turks or heathen you ever
heard of.'

'And where might we find him.?' said Stephen.

'What's that?' said their host, jumping up and
looking around him. 'Here, boys, brush about. The
American gentleman is a-whittling his name on that
new mahogany table. Take him the printed list of
rules, stuck up in a public place, under a great-coat,
and fine him five shillings for damaging the furniture.
If he resists, he has paid for his liquor, call in the
police; X Z, No. 5, is in the bar, taking tea with
your mistress. Now brush.'

'And this place is — '

' In the land of mines and minerals,' said their
host, ' about ten miles from . He works in met-
als on his own account. You have heard of a place
called Hell-house Yard? well, he lives there; and his
name is Simon.'

136 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'And does he keep up any communication with
his brother, think you?' said Gerard.

'Nay, I know no more, at least at present,' said
their host. 'The secretary asked me about a person
absent without leave for twenty years, and who was
said to have no relations. I found you one, and
a very near one. You are at the station, and you
have got your ticket. The American gentleman's
wiolent. Here's the police. I must take a high
tone.' And with these words Chaffmg Jack quitted
them.

In the meantime we must not forget Dandy Mick
and his two young friends, whom he had so gener-
ously offered to treat to the Temple.

'Well, what do you think of it?' asked CaroHne
of Harriet, in a whisper, as they entered the splendid
apartment.

'It's just What I thought the Queen lived in,' said
Harriet; 'but, indeed, I'm all of a flutter.'

'Well, don't look as if you were,' said her friend.

'Come along, gals,' said Mick; 'who's afraid?
Here, we'll sit down at this table. Now what shall
we have? Here, waiter; I say, waiter!'

'Yes, sir; yes, sir.'

'Well, why don't you come when I call?' said
Mick, with a consequential air. 'I have been halloo-
ing these ten minutes. Couple of glasses of bar-
mixture for these ladies, and a go of gin for myself.
And I say, waiter, stop, stop, don't be in such a
deuced hurry; do you think folks can drink without
eating? sausages for three; and, damme, take care they
are not burnt.'

'Yes, sir; directly, directly.'

'That's the way to talk to these fellows,' said

SYBIL

137

Mick, with a self-satisfied air, and perfectly repaid by
the admiring gaze of his companions.

'It's pretty. Miss Harriet,' said Mick, looking up
at the ceiling with a careless, nil admirari glance.

'Oh! it is beautiful,' said Harriet.

'You never were here before; it's the only place.
That's the Lady of the Lake,' he added, pointing to
a picture; 'I've seen her at the Circus, with real
water.'

The hissing sausages, crowning a pile of mashed
potatoes, were placed before them; the delicate rum-
mers of the Mowbray slap-bang for the girls; the more
masculine pewter measure for their friend.

'Are the plates very hot.?' said Mick.

'Very, sir.'

'Hot plates half the battle,' said Mick.

'Now, Caroline; here. Miss Harriet; don't take
away your plate, wait for the mash; they mash their
taters here very elegant.'

It was a happy and a merry party. Mick de-
lighted to help his guests, and to drink their healths.

'Well,' said he, when the waiter had cleared away
their plates, and left them to their less substantial
luxuries — 'Well,' said Mick, sipping a renewed glass
of gin-twist, and leaning back in his chair, 'say what
they please, there's nothing like life.'

'At the Traffords',' said Caroline, 'the greatest fun
we ever had was a singing-class.'

'I pity them poor devils in the country,' said Mick;
'we got some of them at Collinson's, come from
Suffolk, they say; what they call hagricultural labour-
ers; a very queer lot indeed.'

'Ah! them's the himmigrants,' said Caroline;
'they're sold out of slavery, and send down by Pick-

138 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

ford's van into the labour market to bring down our
wages.'

'We'll teach them a trick or two before they do
that,' urged Mick. * Where are you, Miss Harriet?'

'\ am at Wiggins and Webster's, sir.'

'Where they clean machinery during meal- time;
that won't do,' said Mick. M see one of your part-
ners coming in,' said Mick, making many signals to
a person who soon joined them. 'Well, Devilsdust,
how are you.^'

This was the familiar appellation of a young gen-
tleman who really had no other, baptismal or patri-
monial. About a fortnight after his mother had
introduced him into the world, she returned to her
factory, and put her infant out to nurse; that is to
say, paid threepence a week to an old woman, who
takes charge of these new-born babes for the day,
and gives them back at night to their mothers as
they hurriedly return from the scene of their labour
to the dungeon or the den, which is still by courtesy
called 'home.' The expense is not great: laudanum
and treacle, administered in the shape of some popu-
lar elixir, affords these innocents a brief taste^ of the
sweets of existence, and, keeping them quiet, pre-
pares them for the silence of their impending grave.
Infanticide is practised as extensively and as legally in
England as it is on the banks of the Ganges; a cir-
cumstance which apparently has not yet engaged the
attention of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts. But the vital principle is an
impulse from an immortal Artist, and sometimes
baffles, even in its tenderest phasis, the machinations
of society for its extinction. There are infants that
will defy even starvation and poison, unnatu*--*'

SYBIL

139

mothers and demon nurses. Such was the nameless
one of whom we speak. We cannot say he thrived;
but he would not die. So, at two years of age, his
mother being lost sight of, and the weekly payment
having ceased, he was sent out in the street to 'play,'
in order to be run over. Even this expedient failed.
The youngest and the feeblest of the band of victims.
Juggernaut spared him to Moloch. All his compan-
ions were disposed of. Three months' *play' in the
streets got rid of this tender company, shoeless, half-
naked, and uncombed, whose age varied from two to
five years. Some were crushed, some were lost, some
caught cold and fevers, crept back to their garret or
their cellars, were dosed with Godfrey's cordial, and
died in peace. The nameless one would not disap-
pear. He always got out of the way of the carts and
horses, and never lost his own. They gave him no
food: he foraged for himself, and shared with the dogs
the garbage of the streets. But still he lived; stunted
and pale, he defied even the fatal fever which was
the only habitant of his cellar that never quitted it.
And slumbering at night on a bed of mouldering
straw, his only protection against the plashy surface
of his den, with a dung-heap at his head, and a cess-
pool at his feet, he still clung to the only roof which
shielded him from the tempest.

At length, when the nameless one had completed
his fifth year, the pest which never quitted the nest
of cellars of which he was a citizen, raged in the
quarter with such intensity, that the extinction of its
swarming population was menaced. The haunt of
this child was peculiarly visited. All the children
gradually sickened except himself; and one night
when he returned home he found the old woman

HO BENJAMIN DISRAELI

herself dead, and surrounded only by corpses. The
child before this had slept on the same bed of straw
with a corpse, but then there were also breathing be-
ings for his companions. A night passed only with
corpses seemed to him in itself a kind of death. He
stole out of the cellar, quitted the quarter of pesti-
lence, and after much wandering lay down near the
door of a factory. Fortune had guided him. Soon
after break of day, he was awakened by the sound
of the factory bell, and found assembled a crowd of
men, women, and children. The door opened, they
entered, the child accompanied them. The roll was
called; his unauthorised appearance noticed; he was
questioned; his acuteness excited attention. A child
was wanting in the Wadding Hole, a place for the
manufacture of waste and damaged cotton, the refuse
of the mills, which is here worked up into counter-
panes and coverlets. The nameless one was preferred
to the vacant post, received even a salary, more than
that, a name; for as he had none, he was christened
on the spot Devilsdust.

Devilsdust had entered life so early that at seven-
teen he combined the experience of manhood with
the divine energy of youth. He was a first-rate work-
man, and received high wages; he had availed him-
self of the advantages of the factory school; he soon
learnt to read and write with facility, and at the mo-
ment of our history was the leading spirit of the
Shoddy-court Literary and Scientific Institute. His
great friend, his only intimate, was Dandy Mick. The
apparent contrariety of their qualities and structure
perhaps led to this. It is indeed the most assured
basis of friendship. Devilsdust was dark and melan-
choly, ambitious and discontented, full of thought,

SYBIL

and with powers of patience and perseverance that
alone amounted to genius. Mick was as brilliant as
his complexion; gay, irritable, evanescent, and un-
stable. Mick enjoyed life; his friend only endured it;
yet Mick was always complaining of the lowness of
his wages, and the greatness of his toil; while Devils-
dust never murmured, but read and pondered on the
rights of labour, and sighed to vindicate his order.

M have some thoughts of joining the Total Ab-
stinence,' said Devilsdust; 'ever since I read Stephen
Morley's address, it has been in my mind. We shall
never get our rights till we leave off consuming ex-
cisable articles; and the best thing to begin with is
liquors.'

'Well, I could do without Hquors myself,' said
Caroline. 'If 1 was a lady, I would never drink any-
thing except fresh milk from the cow.'

'Tea for my money,' said Harriet; 'I must say
there's nothing I grudge for good tea. Now I keep
house, I mean always to drink the best.'

'Well, you have not yet taken the pledge. Dusty,'
said Mick; 'and so suppose we order a go of gin,
and talk this matter of temperance over.'

Devilsdust was manageable in little things, espe-
cially by Mick : he acceded, and seated himself at their
table.

' I suppose you have heard this last dodge of Shuffle
and Screw, Dusty.?' said Mick.
'What's that.?'

'Every man had his key given him this evening;
half-a-crown a week round deducted from wages for
rent. Jim Plastow told them he lodged with his
father, and didn't want a house; upon which they said
he must let it.'

142 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Their day will come,' said Devilsdust, thought-
fully. 'I really think that those Shuffles and Screws
are worse even than Truck and Trett. You knew
where you were with those fellows; it was five-and-
twenty per cent, off wages, and very bad stuff for
your money. But as for Shuffle and Screw, what with
their fines and their keys, a man never knows what
he has to spend. Come,' he added, filling his glass,
'let's have a toast: Confusion to Capital.'

'That's your sort,' said Mick. 'Come, Caroline;
drink to your partner's toast. Miss Harriet. Money's
the root of all evil, which nobody can deny. We'll
have the rights of labour yet; the ten-hour bill, no
fines, and no individuals admitted to any work who
have not completed their sixteenth year.'

'No, fifteen,' said Caroline, eagerly.

'The people won't bear their grievances much
longer,' said Devilsdust.

'I think one of the greatest grievances the people
have,' said Caroline, 'is the beaks serving notice on
Chaffmg Jack to shut up the Temple on Sunday
nights.'

'It is infamous,' said Mick; 'ayn't we to have no
recreation? One might as well live in Suffolk, where
the immigrants come from, and where they are obliged
to burn ricks to pass the time.'

'As for the rights of labour,' said Harriet, 'the
people goes for nothing with this machinery.'

'And you have opened your mouth to say a very
sensible thing. Miss Harriet,' said Mick; 'but if I were
Lord Paramount for eight-and-forty hours, I'd soon
settle that question. Wouldn't I fire a broadside into
their "double deckers"? The battle of Navarino at
Mowbray fair, with fourteen squibs from the admiral's

SYBIL

143

ship going off at the same time, should be nothing
to it.'

'Labour may be weak, but capital is weaker,' said
Devilsdust. * Their capital is all paper.'

M tell you what,' said Mick, with a knowing look,
and in a lowered tone, *the only thing, my hearties,
that can save this here nation is a good strike.'

CHAPTER XVII.

Aubrey St. Lys.

OUR lordship's dinner is served,'
announced the groom of the cham-
bers to Lord de Mowbray; and
\o the noble lord led out Lady Mar-
/ ney. The rest followed. Egre-
mont found himself seated next to

Lady Maud Fitz-Warene, the younger daughter of the
earl. Nearly opposite to him was Lady Joan.

The ladies Fitz-Warene were sandy girls, some-
what tall, with rather good figures, and a grand air;
the elder ugly, the second rather pretty; and yet
both very much alike. They both had great conver-
sational powers, though in different ways. Lady
Joan was doctrinal; Lady Maud inquisitive: the first
often imparted information which you did not pre-
viously possess; the other suggested ideas which were
often before in your own mind, but lay tranquil and
unobserved till called into life and notice by her fanciful
and vivacious tongue. Both of them were endowed
with a remarkable self-possession; but Lady Joan
wanted softness, and Lady Maud repose.

This was the result of the rapid observation of
Egremont, who was, however, experienced in the

(«44)

SYBIL

world and quick in his detection of manner and of
character.

The dinner was stately, as becomes the high no-
bility. There were many guests, yet the table seemed
only a gorgeous spot in the capacious chamber. The
side tables were laden with silver vases and golden
shields arranged on shelves of crimson velvet. The
walls were covered with Fitz-Warenes, De Mowbrays,
and De Veres. The attendants glided about without
noise, and with the precision of military discipline.
They watched your wants, they anticipated your
wishes, and they supplied all you desired with a lofty
air of pompous devotion.

* You came by the railroad ? ' inquired Lord de
Mowbray mournfully, of Lady Marney.

'From Marham; about ten miles from us,' rephed
her ladyship.

* A great revolution ! '
' Isn't it?'

M fear it has a dangerous tendency to equality/
said his lordship, shaking his head: 'I suppose
Lord Marney gives them all the opposition in his
power.'

* There is nobody so violent against railroads as
George,' said Lady Marney. 'I cannot tell you what
he does not do! He organised the whole of our di-
vision against the Marham line!'

M rather counted on him,' said Lord de Mowbray,
'to assist me in resisting this joint branch here; but
I was surprised to learn he had consented.'

'Not until the compensation was settled,' inno-
cently remarked Lady Marney; 'George never opposes
them after that. He gave up all opposition to the
Marham line when they agreed to his terms.'

14 B. D.— 10

146 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'And yet,' said Lord de Mowbray, 'I think if
Lord Marney would take a different view of the case,
and look to the moral consequences, he would hesi-
tate. Equality, Lady Marney, equality is not our
metier. If we nobles do not make a stand against
the levelling spirit of the age, I am at a loss to know
who will fight the battle. You may depend upon it
that these railroads are very dangerous things.'

' I have no doubt of it. 1 suppose you have heard
of Lady Vanilla's trip from Birmingham ? Have you
not indeed ? She came up with Lady Laura, and two
of the most gentlemanhke men sitting opposite her;
never met, she says, two more intelligent men. She
begged one of them at Wolverhampton to change
seats with her, and he was most politely willing to
comply with her wishes, only it was necessary that
his companion should move at the same time, for
they were chained together! Two gentlemen, sent
to town for picking a pocket at Shrewsbury races.'

* A countess and a felon ! So much for public con-
veyances,' said Lord Mowbray. 'But Lady Vanilla is
one of those who will talk with everybody.'

'She is very amusing, though,' said Lady Marney.

'I dare say she is,' said Lord de Mowbray; 'but
believe me, my dear Lady Marney, in these times
especially, a countess has something else to do than
be amusing.'

'You think, as property has its duties as well as
its rights, rank has its bores as well as its pleasures.'
Lord Mowbray mused.

'How do you do, Mr. Jermyn?' said a lively little
lady with sparkling beady black eyes, and a yellow
complexion, though with good features: 'when did
you arrive in the north? I have been fighting your

SYBIL

147

battles finely since I saw you/ she added, shaking
her head rather with an expression of admonition
than of sympathy.

'You are always fighting one's battles, Lady Fire-
brace; it is very kind of you. If it were not for you,
we should none of us know how much we are all
abused,' replied Mr. Jermyn, a young M.P.

'They say you gave the most radical pledges,'
said Lady Firebrace eagerly, and not without malice.
'\ heard Lord Muddlebrains say that if he had had
the least idea of your principles, you would not have
had his influence.'

'Muddlebrains can't command a single vote,' said
Mr. Jermyn. ' He is a political humbug, the greatest
of all humbugs; a man who swaggers about London
clubs and consults solemnly about his influence, and
in the country is a nonentity.'

'Well, that can't be said of Lord Clarinel,' rejoined
Lady Firebrace.

'And have you been defending me against Lord
Clarinel's attacks.?' inquired Mr. Jermyn.

'No; but I am going to Wemsbury, and then I
have no doubt I shall have the opportunity.'

'I am going to Wemsbury myself,' said Mr.
Jermyn.

' And what does Lord Clarinel think of your pledge
about the pension list?' said Lady Firebrace, daunted
but malignant.

'He never told me,' said Mr. Jermyn.

'I believe you did not pledge yourself to the bal-
lot?' inquired Lady Firebrace with an affected air of
inquisitiveness.

'It is a subject that requires some reflection,' said
Mr. Jermyn. ' I must consult some profound poHtician

148 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

like Lady Firebrace. By-the-bye, you told my mother
that the Conservatives would have a majority of fifteen.
Do you think they will have so much?' said Mr.
Jermyn with an innocent air, it now being notorious
that the Whig administration had a majority of double
that amount.

*1 said Mr. Tadpole gave us a majority of fifteen,'
said Lady Firebrace. M knew he was in error; be-
cause I had happened to see Lord Melbourne's own
list, made up to the last hour; and which gave the
government a majority of sixty. It was only shown
to three members of the cabinet,' she added, in a
tone of triumphant mystery.

Lady Firebrace, a great stateswoman among the
Tories, was proud of an admirer who was a member
of the Whig cabinet. She was rather an agreeable
guest in a country house, with her extensive corre-
spondence, and her bulletins from both sides. Tadpole,
flattered by her notice, and charmed with female
society that talked his own slang, and entered with
affected enthusiasm into all his petty plots and barren
machinations, was vigilant in his communications;
while her Whig cavalier, an easy individual, who
always made love by talking or writing politics,
abandoned himself without reserve, and instructed
Lady Firebrace regularly after every council. Taper
looked grave at this connection between Tadpole and
Lady Firebrace; and whenever an election was lost,
or a division stuck in the mud, he gave the cue with
a nod and monosyllable, and the Conservative pack
that infests clubs, chattering on subjects of which it
is impossible they can know anything, instantly began
barking and yelping, denouncing traitors, and wonder-
ing how the leaders could be so led by the nose and

SYBIL

149

not see that which was flagrant to the whole world.
If, on the other hand, the advantage seemed to go
with the Carlton Club, or the opposition benches,
then it was the Whig and Liberal hounds who
howled and moaned, explaining everything by the
indiscretion, infatuation, treason of Lord Viscount
Masque, and appealing to the initiated world of
idiots around them, whether any party could ever suc-
ceed, hampered by such men, and influenced by
such means.

The best of the joke was, that all this time Lord
Masque and Tadpole were two old foxes, neither of
whom conveyed to Lady Firebrace a single circum-
stance but with the wish, intention, and malice afore-
thought, that it should be communicated to his rival.

'I must get you to interest Lord de Mowbray in
our cause,' said Sir Vavasour Firebrace, in an insinu-
ating voice, to his neighbour. Lady Joan; '\ have sent
him a large packet of documents. You know, he is
one of us; still one of us. Once a baronet, always a
baronet. The dignity merges, but does not cease;
and happy as I am to see one covered with high
honours who is in every way so worthy of them,
still I confess to you it is not so much as Earl de
Mowbray that your worthy father interests me, as in
his undoubted character and capacity of Sir Altamont
Fitz-Warene, baronet.'

'You have the data on which you move, I sup-
pose, well digested,' said Lady Joan, attentive, but
not interested.

'The case is clear; so far as equity is concerned,
irresistible; indeed the late king pledged himself to a
certain point. But if you would do me the favour of
reading our memorial.'

}

ISO BENJAMIN DISRAELI

*The proposition is not one adapted to our pres-
ent civilisation,' said Lady Joan. *A baronetcy has
become the distinction of the middle class; a physi-
cian, our physician for example, is a baronet; and I
dare say, some of our tradesmen; brewers, or people
of that class. An attempt to elevate them into an
order of nobility, however inferior, would partake, in
some degree, of the ridiculous.'

'And has the duke escaped his gout this year?'
inquired Lord Marney of Lady de Mowbray.

'A slight touch; 1 never knew my father so well.
I expect you will meet him here. We look for him
daily.'

'I shall be delighted; I hope he will come to
Marney in October. 1 keep the blue ribbon cover for
him.'

'What you suggest is very just,' said Egremont to
Lady Maud. ' If we only, in our own spheres, made the
exertion, the general effect would be great. Marney
Abbey, for instance, 1 believe one of the finest of our
monastic remains, that indeed is not disputed, dimin-
ished yearly to repair barns; the cattle browsing in
the nave; all this might be prevented. If my brother
would not consent to preserve or to restore, still any
member of the family, even I, without expense, only
with a little zeal, as you say, might prevent mischief,
might stop demolition at least.'

* If this movement in the church had only revived
a taste for Christian architecture,' said Lady Maud, 'it
would not have been barren, and it has done so much
more! But I am surprised that old families can be so
dead to our national art; so full of our ancestors, their
exploits, their mind. Indeed you and I have no ex-
cuse for such indifference, Mr. Egremont.'

SYBIL

'And I do not think I shall ever again be justly
accused of it,' replied Egremont, *you plead its cause
so effectively. But to tell you the truth, I have been
thinking of late about these things; monasteries and
so on; the influence of the old church system on the
happiness and comfort of the people.'

'And on the tone of the nobles; do not you think
so?' said Lady Maud. 'I knov^ it is the fashion to
deride the crusades, but do not you think they had
their origin in a great impulse, and, in a certain sense,
led to great results.? Pardon me if I speak with em-
phasis, but 1 never can forget 1 am a daughter of the
first Crusaders.'

'The tone of society is certainly lower than of
yore,' said Egremont. 'It is easy to say we view the
past through a fallacious medium. We have, how-
ever, ample evidence that men feel less deeply than
of old, and act with less devotion. But how far is
this occasioned by the modern position of our church ?
That is the question.'

'You must speak to Mr. St. Lys about that,' said
Lady Maud. 'Do you know him.?' she added in a
lower tone.

'No; is he here?'

'Next to mamma.'

And, looking in that direction, on the left hand of
Lady Mowbray, Egremont beheld a gentleman in the
last year of his youth, if youth according to the scale
of Hippocrates cease at thirty-five. He was distin-
guished by that beauty of the noble English blood, of
which in these days few types remain; the Norman
tempered by the Saxon; the fire of conquest softened by
integrity; and a serene, though inflexible habit of mind.
The chains of convention, an external life grown out

152 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

of all proportion with that of the heart and mind,
have destroyed this dignified beauty. There is no
longer in fact an aristocracy in England, for the su-
periority of the animal man is an essential quality of
aristocracy. But that it once existed, any collection
of portraits from the sixteenth century will show.

Aubrey St. Lys was a younger son of the most
ancient Norman family in England. The Conqueror
had given them the moderate estate on which they
now lived, and which, in spite of so many civil con-
flicts and religious changes, they had handed down to
each other, from generation to generation, for eight
centuries. Aubrey St. Lys was the vicar of Mowbray.
He had been the college tutor of the late Lord Fitz-
Warene, whose mind he had formed, whose bright
abilities he had cultivated, who adored him. To that
connection he owed the slight preferment which he
possessed, but which was all he desired. A bishopric
would not have tempted him from his peculiar charge.

In the centre of the town of Mowbray, teeming
with its toiling thousands, there rose a building which
might vie with many of the cathedrals of our land.
Beautiful its solemn towers, its sculptured western
front; beautiful its columned aisles and lofty nave; its
sparkling shrine and delicate chantry; most beautiful
the streaming glories of its vast orient light!

This magnificent temple, built by the monks of
Mowbray, and once connected with their famous
house, of which not a trace now remained, had in
time become the parish church of an obscure village,
whose population could not have filled one of its
side chapels. These strange vicissitudes of ecclesias-
tical buildings are not singular in the north of Eng-
land,

SYBIL

153

Mowbray Church remained for centuries the won-
der of passing peasants, and. the glory of county his-
tories. But there is a magic in the beautiful buildings
which exercises an irresistible influence over the mind
of man. One of the reasons urged for the destruction
of the monasteries after the dispersion of their in-
habitants, was the pernicious influence of their solemn
and stately forms on the memories and imagination
of those that beheld them. It was impossible to con-
nect systematic crime with the creators of such divine
fabrics. And so it was with Mowbray Church.
When manufactures were introduced into this dis-
trict, which abounded with all the qualities necessary
for their successful pursuit, to Mowbray, offering
equal though not superior advantages to other posi-
tions, was accorded the preference, ' because it pos-
sessed such a beautiful church.' The lingering genius
of the monks of Mowbray hovered round the spot
which they had adorned, and sanctified, and loved;
and thus they had indirectly become the authors of
its present greatness and prosperity.

Unhappily, for a long season the vicars of Mow-
bray had been Httle conscious of their mission. An
immense population gathered round the sacred citadel
and gradually spread on all sides of it for miles. But
the parish church for a long time remained the only
one at Mowbray when the population of the town
exceeded that of some European capitals. And even
in the parish church the frigid spell of Erastian self-
complacency fatally prevailed. A scanty congregation
gathered together for form, and as much influenced
by party as higher sentiments. Going to church was
held more genteel than going to meeting. The prin-
cipal tradesmen of the neighbouring great houses

154 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

deemed it more 'aristocratic;' using a favourite and
hackneyed epithet, which only expressed their own
servility. About the time the Church Commission is-
sued, the congregation of Mowbray was approaching
zero. There was an idea afloat for a time of making
it the seat of a new bishopric; the cathedral was
ready; another instance of the influence of fine art.
But there was no residence for the projected prelate,
and a jobbing bishop on the commission was afraid
that he might have to contribute to building one. So
the idea died away; and the living having become
vacant at this moment, instead of a bishop, Mowbray
received an humble vicar in the shape of Aubrey St.
Lys, who came among a hundred thousand heathen
to preach 'the Unknown God.'

CHAPTER XVIII.

A Friend of the People.

ND how do you find the people
about you, Marney?' said Lord de
Mowbray, seating himself on a sofa
by his guest.
'All very well, my lord,' repHed
the earl, who ever treated Lord de
Mowbray with a certain degree of ceremony, espec-
ially when the descendant of the Crusaders affected
the familiar. There was something of a Puck-like
malignity in the temperament of Lord Marney, which
exhibited itself in a remarkable talent for mortifying
persons in a small way: by a gesture, an expression,
a look, cloaked, too, very often with all the character
of profound deference. The old nobility of Spain
delighted to address each other only by their names,
when in the presence of a spic-and-span grandee;
calling each other, 'Infantado,' 'Sidonia,' *Ossuna,'
and then turning round with the most distinguished
consideration, and appealing to the Most Noble Mar-
quis of Ensenada.

'They begin to get a little uneasy here,' said Lord
de Mowbray.

'We have nothing to complain of,' said Lord
Marney. 'We continue reducing the rates, and as

(^55)

156 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

long as we do that the country must improve. The
workhouse test tells. We had the other day a case
of incendiarism, which frightened some people; but I
inquired into it, and am quite satisfied it originated
in purely accidental circumstances; at least nothing
to do with wages. I ought to be a judge, for it was
on my own property.'

'And what is the rate of wages in your part of
the world. Lord Marney.?*' enquired Mr. St. Lys, who
was standing by.

*0h! good enough: not like your manufacturing
districts; but people who work in the open air instead
of a furnace can't expect, and don't require such.
They get their eight shillings a week; at least gener-
ally.'

'Eight shillings a week!' said Mr. St. Lys. Xan
a labouring man with a family, perhaps of eight chil-
dren, live on eight shiUings a week?'

'Oh! as for that,' said Lord Marney, 'they get
more than that, because there is beer-money allowed,
at least to a great extent among us, though I for one
do not approve of the practice, and that makes nearly
a shilling per week additional; and then some of them
have potato grounds, though I am entirely opposed
to that system.'

'And yet,' said Mr. St. Lys, 'how they contrive
to live is to me marvellous.'

'Oh! as for that,' said Lord Marney, 'I have gen-
erally found the higher the wages the worse the
workman. They only spend their money in the beer-
shops. They are the curse of this country.'

'But what is a poor man to do,' said Mr. St. Lys,
'after his day's work, if he return to his own roof
and find no home; his fire extinguished, his food

SYBIL

157

unprepared; the partner of his life, wearied with la-
bour in the field or the factory, still absent, or per-
haps in bed from exhaustion, or because she has
returned wet to the skin, and has no change of rai-
ment for her relief? We have removed woman from
her sphere; we may have reduced wages by her in-
troduction into the market of labour; but under these
circumstances what we call domestic life is a condi-
tion impossible to be reaHsed for the people of this
country; and we must not therefore be surprised
that they seek solace or rather refuge in the beer-
shop.'

Lord Marney looked up at Mr. St. Lys with a
stare of high-bred impertinence, and then carelessly
observed, without directing his words to him, 'They
may say what they like, but it is all an affair of popu-
lation.'

' I would rather believe that it is an affair of re-
sources,' said Mr. St. Lys; 'not what is the amount
of our population, but what is the amount of our re-
sources for their maintenance.'

Mt comes to the same thing,' said Lord Marney.
'Nothing can put this country right but emigration
on a great scale; and as the government do not choose
to undertake it, I have commenced it for my own
defence on a small scale. I will take care that the
population of my parishes is not increased. I build
no cottages, and I destroy all I can; and I am not
ashamed or afraid to say so.'

'You have declared war to the cottage, then,' said
Mr. St. Lys, smiling. 'It is not at the first sound so
startling a cry as war to the castle.'

'But you think it may lead to it?' said Lord de
Mowbray.

158 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'I love not to be a prophet of evil,' said Mr. St.
Lys.

Lord Marney rose from his seat and addressed Lady
Firebrace, whose husband in another part of the room
had caught Mr. Jermyn, and was opening his mind
on 'the question of the day;' Lady Maud, followed
by Egremont, approached Mr. St. Lys, and said, 'Mr.
Egremont has a great feeling for Christian architec-
ture, Mr. St. Lys, and wishes particularly to visit our
church, of which we are so proud.' And in a few
moments they were seated together, and engaged in
conversation.

Lord de Mowbray placed himself by the side of
Lady Marney, who was seated by his countess.

'Oh! how I envy you at Marney!* he exclaimed.
'No manufactures, no smoke; living in the midst of
a beautiful park, and surrounded by a contented peas-
antry ! '

'It is very delightful,' said Lady Marney, 'but
then we are so dull; we have really no neighbour-
hood.'

'I think that such an advantage,' said Lady de
Mowbray; 'I must say I like my friends from London.
I never know what to say to the people here. Ex-
cellent people, the very best people in the world; the
way they behaved to poor dear Fitz-Warene, when
they wanted him to stand for the county, I never can
forget; but then they do not know the people we
know, or do the things we do; and when you have
gone through the routine of county questions, and
exhausted the weather and all the winds, I am posi-
tively, my dear Lady Marney, aux abois, and then
they think you are proud, when really one is only
stupid.*

SYBIL

159

*I am fond of work,' said Lady Marney, 'and I
talk to them always about it.'

*Ah! you are fortunate, I never could work; and
Joan and Maud, they neither of them work. Maud
did embroider a banner once for her brother; it is in
the hall. I think it beautiful: but somehow or other
she never cultivated her talent.*

*For all that has occurred, or may occur,' said Mr.
St. Lys to Egremont, ' I blame only the Church. The
Church deserted the people; and from that moment
the Church has been in danger, and the people de-
graded. Formerly religion undertook to satisfy the
noble wants of human nature, and by its festivals re-
lieved the painful weariness of toil. The day of rest
was consecrated, if not always to elevated thoughts,
at least to sweet and noble sentiments. The Church
convened to its solemnities, under its splendid and
almost celestial roofs, amid the finest monuments of
art that human hands have raised, the whole Chris-
tian population; for there, in the presence of God, all
were brethren. It shared equally among all its prayer,
its incense, and its music, its sacred instructions, and
the highest enjoyments that the arts could afford.'

'You believe, then, in the efficacy of forms and
ceremonies ? '

'What you call forms and ceremonies represent
the divinest instincts of our nature. Push your aver-
sion to forms and ceremonies to a legitimate conclu-
sion, and you would prefer kneeling in a barn rather
than in a cathedral. Your tenets would strike at the
very existence of all art, which is essentially spiritual.'

'I am not speaking abstractedly,' said Egremont,
' but rather with reference to the indirect connection
of these forms and ceremonies with another church.

i6o BENJAMIN DISRAELI

The people of this country associate them with an
enthralling superstition and a foreign dominion.'

*With Rome,' said Mr. St. Lys; 'yet forms and
ceremonies existed before Rome.'

'But practically,' said Egremont, 'has not their
revival in our service at the present day a tendency
to restore the Romish system in this country ? '

' It is difficult to ascertain what may be the prac-
tical effect of certain circumstances among the unin-
formed,' said Mr. St. Lys. ' The Church of Rome is to be
respected as the only Hebraeo-Christian Church extant;
all other churches established by the Hebrew apostles
have disappeared, but Rome remains; and we must
never permit the exaggerated position which it as-
sumed in the middle centuries to make us forget its
early and apostolical character, when it was fresh from
Palestine, and as it were fragrant from Paradise.
The Church of Rome is sustained by apostolical succes-
sion; but apostolical succession is not an institution
complete in itself; it is a part of a whole; if it be
not part of a whole it has no foundation. The apos-
tles succeeded the prophets. Our Master announced
himself as the last of the prophets. They in their
turn were the heirs of the patriarchs: men who were
in direct communication with the Most High. To
men not less favoured than the apostles, the revelation
of the priestly character was made, and those forms
and ceremonies ordained which the Church of Rome
has never relinquished. But Rome did not invent
them: upon their practice, the duty of all congre-
gations, we cannot consent to her founding a claim
to supremacy. For would you maintain then that the
Church did not exist in the time of the prophets.^
Was Moses then not a churchman ? And Aaron,

SYBIL

i6i

was he not a high priest ? Ay ! greater than any
pope or prelate, whether he be at Rome or at Lam-
beth.

Mn all these Church discussions, we are apt to
forget that the second Testament is avowedly only a
supplement. Jehovah-Jesus came to complete the
'Maw and the prophets." Christianity is completed
Judaism, or it is nothing. Christianity is incompre-
hensible without Judaism, as Judaism is incomplete
without Christianity. What has Rome to do with its
completion; what with its commencement? The law
was not thundered forth from the Capitolian mount;
the Divine Atonement was not fulfilled upon Mons
Sacer. No; the order of our priesthood comes di-
rectly from Jehovah; and the forms and ceremonies of
His Church are the regulations of His supreme intelli-
gence. Rome indeed boasts that the authenticity of
the second Testament depends upon the recognition
of her infallibility. The authenticity of the second
Testament depends upon its congruity with the first.
Did Rome preserve thsLt? I recognise in the Church
an institution thoroughly, sincerely catholic: adapted
to all chmes, and to all ages. I do not bow to the
necessity of a visible head in a defined locality; but
were I to seek for such, it would not be at Rome.
I cannot discover in its history, however memorable,
any testimony of a mission so sublime. When
Omnipotence deigned to be incarnate, the Ineffable
Word did not select a Roman frame. The prophets
were not Romans; the apostles were not Romans;
she who was blessed above all women, I never heard
she was a Roman maiden. No, I should look to a
land more distant than Italy, to a city more sacred
even than Rome.'

14 B. D.— II

CHAPTER XIX.

A Herald of the Dawn.

T WAS a cloudy, glimmering dawn.
A cold withering east wind blew
through the silent streets of Mow-
bray. The sounds of the night
had died away, the voices of the
day had not commenced. There
reigned a stillness complete and absorbing.

Suddenly there is a voice, there is a movement.
The first footstep of the new week of toil is heard.
A man muffled up in a thick coat, and bearing in his
hand what would seem at the first glance to be a
shepherd's crook, only its handle is much longer, ap-
pears upon the pavement. He touches a number of
windows with great quickness as he moves rapidly along.
A rattling noise sounds upon each pane. The use of the
long handle of his instrument becomes apparent as he
proceeds, enabling him as it does to reach the upper
windows of the dwellings whose inmates he has
to rouse. Those inmates are the factory girls, who
subscribe in districts to engage these heralds of the
dawn; and by a strict observance of whose citation
they can alone escape the dreaded fine that awaits
those who have not arrived at the door of the factory
before the bell ceases to sound.
(162)

SYBIL

The sentry in question, quitting the streets, and
stooping through one of the small archways that we
have before noticed, entered a court. Here lodged a
multitude of his employers; and the long crook, as it
were by some sleight of hand, seemed sounding on
both sides, and at many windows at the same mo-
ment. Arrived at the end of the court, he was about
to touch the window of the upper story of the last
tenement, when that window opened, and a man,
pale and careworn, and, in a melancholy voice, spoke
to him.

'Simmons,' said the man, 'you need not rouse
this story any more; my daughter has left us.'
'Has she left Webster's?'

'No; but she has left us. She has long murmured
at her hard lot; working like a slave, and not for
herself. And she has gone, as they all go, to keep
house for herself.'

'That's a bad business,' said the watchman, in a
tone not devoid of sympathy. ^

' Almost as bad as for parents to live on their chil-
dren's wages,' replied the man mournfully.

'And how is your good woman?'

' As poorly as needs be. Harriet has never been
home since Friday night. She owes you nothing?'

'Not a halfpenny. She was as regular as a little
bee, and always paid every Monday morning. I am
sorry she has left you, neighbour.'

'The Lord's will be done. It's hard times for such
as us,' said the man; and, leaving the window open,
he retired into his room.

It was a single chamber of which he was the
tenant. In the centre, placed so as to gain the best
light which the gloomy situation could afford, was a

i64 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

loom. In two corners of the room were mattresses
placed on the floor, a check curtain, hung upon a
string, if necessary, concealing them. On one was
his sick wife; on the other, three young children:
two girls, the eldest about eight years of age; be-
tween them their baby brother. An iron kettle was
by the hearth, and on the mantelpiece some candles,
a few lucifer matches, two tin mugs, a paper of salt,
and an iron spoon. In a farther part, close to the
wall, was a heavy table or dresser; this was a fixture,
as well as the form which was fastened by it.

The man seated himself at his loom; he com-
menced his daily task.

. 'Twelve hours of daily labour, at the rate of one
penny each hour; and even this labour is mortgaged!
How is this to end? Is it rather not ended.?' And
he looked around him at his chamber without re-
sources: no food, no fuel, no furniture, and four
human beings dependent on him, and lying in their
wretched beds, because they had no clothes. 'I can-
not sell my loom,' he continued, *at the price of old
firewood, and it cost me gold. It is not vice that
has brought me to this, nor indolence, nor impru-
dence. I was born to labour, and 1 was ready to
labour. I loved my loom, and my loom loved me.
It gave me a cottage in my native village, surrounded
by a garden, of whose claims on my solicitude it
was not jealous. There was time for both. It gave
me for a wife the maiden that I had ever loved; and
it gathered my children round my hearth with plen-
teousness and peace. I was content: I sought no
other lot. It is not adversity that makes me look
back upon the past with tenderness.

'Then why am I here? Why am I, and six

SYBIL

165

hundred thousand subjects of the Queen, honest,
loyal, and industrious, why are we, after manfully
struggling for years, and each year sinking lower in
the scale, why are we driven from our innocent and
happy homes, our country cottages that we loved,
first to bide in close towns without comforts, and
gradually to crouch into cellars, or find a squalid lair
like this, without even the common necessaries of
existence; first the ordinary conveniences of Hfe, then
raiment, and at length food, vanishing from us?

' It is that the capitalist has found a slave that has
supplanted the labour and ingenuity of man. Once
he was an artisan: at the best, he now only watches
machines; and even that occupation slips from his
grasp to the woman and the child. The capitalist
flourishes, he amasses immense wealth; w^e sink,
lower and lower; lower than the beasts of burthen,
for they are fed better than we are, cared for more.
And it is just, for according to the present system
they are more precious. And yet they tell us that
the interests of capital and of labour are identical.

'If a society that has been created by labour sud-
denly becomes independent of it, that society is bound
to maintain the race whose only property is labour,
out of the proceeds of that other property, which has
not ceased to be productive.

' When the class of the nobility were supplanted
in France, they did not amount in number to one-third
of us hand-loom weavers; yet all Europe went to
war to avenge their wrongs, every state subscribed
to maintain them in their adversity, and when they
were restored to their own country their own land
suppHed them with an immense indemnity. Who
cares for us ? Yet we have lost our estates. Who

i66 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

raises a voice for us ? Yet we are at least as innocent
as the nobility of France. We sink among no sighs
except our own. And if they give us sympathy,
what then? Sympathy is the solace of the poor; but
for the rich there is compensation.'

Ms that Harriet.^' said his wife, moving in her bed.

The hand-loom weaver was recalled from his
reverie to the urgent misery that surrounded him.

'No!' he replied in a quick hoarse voice, 'it is
not Harriet.'

*Why does not Harriet come?'

'She will come no more!' replied the weaver; 'I
told you so last night: she can bear this place no
longer; and I am not surprised.'

'How are we to get food, then?' rejoined his
wife; 'you ought not to have let her leave us. You
do nothing, Warner. You get no wages yourself;
and you have let the girl escape.'

'I will escape myself if you say that again,' said
the weaver: 'I have been up these three hours finish-
ing this piece, which ought to have been taken home
on Saturday night.'

' But you have been paid for it beforehand. You
get nothing for your work. A penny an hour! What
sort of work is it that brings a penny an hour?'

'Work that you have often admired, Mary, and
has before this gained a prize. But if you don't like
the work,' said the man, quitting his loom, 'let it
alone. There was enough yet owing on this piece
to have allowed us to break our fast. However, no
matter; we must starve sooner or later. Let us be-
gin at once.'

'No, no, Philip! work. Let us break our fast,
come what may.'

SYBIL

167

'Twit me no more, then,' said the weaver, resum-
ing his seat, 'or I throw the shuttle for the last time.'

'I will not taunt you,' said his wife in a kinder
tone. 'I was wrong; I am sorry; but I am very ill.
It is not for myself I speak; I want not to eat; I have
no appetite; my lips are so very parched. But the
children, the children went supperless to bed, and
they will wake soon.'

'Mother, we ayn't asleep,' said the elder girl.

'No, we ayn't asleep, mother,' said her sister;
'we heard all that you said to father.'

'And baby?'

' He sleeps still.'

'I shiver very much!' said the mother. 'It's a
cold day. Pray shut the window, Warner. I see the
drops upon the pane; it is raining. I wonder if the
persons below would lend us one block of coal.'

'We have borrowed too often,' said Warner.

'I wish there were no such thing as coal in the
land,' said his wife, 'and then the engines would not be
able to work; and we should have our rights again.'

'Amen!' said Warner.

'Don't you think, Warner,' said his wife, 'that
you could sell that piece to some other person, and
owe Barber for the money he advanced?'

'No!' said her husband, fiercely. * I'll go straight.'

'And let your children starve,' said his wife,
'when you could get five or six shillings at once.
But so it always was with you. Why did not you
go to the machines years ago like other men, and so
get used to them ? '

'I should have been supplanted by this time,' said
Warner, 'by a girl or a woman! It would have
been just as bad! '

i68 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Why, there was your friend, Walter Gerard; he
was the same as you, and yet now he gets two
pound a week; at least I have often heard you say
so.'

'Walter Gerard is a man of great parts,' said
Warner, 'and might have been a master himself by
this time had he cared.'

'And why did he not?'

'He had no wife and children,' said Warner; 'he
was not so blessed.'

The baby woke and began to cry.

'Ah! my child!' exclaimed the mother. 'That
wicked Harriet! Here, Amelia, 1 have a morsel of
crust here. I saved it yesterday for baby; moisten it
in water, and tie it up in this piece of calico: he will
suck it; it will keep him quiet; I can bear anything
but his cry.'

'I shall have finished my job by noon,' said War-
ner; 'and then, please God, we shall break our fast.'

'It is yet two hours to noon,' said his wife. 'And
Barber always keeps you so long! 1 cannot bear that
Barber: I dare say he will not advance you money
again, as you did not bring the job home on Satur-
day night. If I were you, Philip, I would go and sell
the piece unfinished at once to one of the cheap
shops.'

'I have gone straight all my life,' said Warner.

'And much good it has done you,' said his wife.

'My poor Amelia! How she shivers! I think the
sun never touches this house. It is, indeed, a most
wretched place.'

'It will not annoy you long, Mary,' said her hus-
band: 'I can pay no more rent; and I only wonder
they have not been here already to take the week.'

SYBIL

169

*And where are we to go?' said the wife.

'To a place which certainly the sun never touches/
said her husband, with a kind of malice in his misery
— 'to a cellar.'

' Oh ! why was I ever born } ' exclaimed his wife.
'And yet I was so happy once! And it is not our
fault. I cannot make it out, Warner, why you should
not get two pounds a week like Walter Gerard.'

* Bah ! ' said the husband.

'You said he had no family,' continued his wife.
'I thought he had a daughter.'

'But she is no burthen to him. The sister of
Mr. Trafford is the Superior of the convent here, and
she took Sybil when her mother died, and brought
her up.'

'Oh! then she is a nun?'

'Not yet; but 1 dare say it will end in it.'

'Well, 1 think 1 would even sooner starve,' said
his wife, 'than my children should be nuns.'

At this moment there was a knocking at the
door. Warner descended from his loom, and opened
it.

'Lives Philip Warner here?' enquired a clear voice
of peculiar sweetness.
'My name is Warner.'

'I come from Walter Gerard,' continued the voice.
'Your letter reached him only last night. The girl at
whose house your daughter left it has quitted this
week past Mr. Trafford's factory.'

' Pray enter.'

And there entered Sybil.

CHAPTER XX.

An Angel of Mercy.
I

OUR wife is ill.?' said Sybil.

'Very!' replied Warners wife.
'Our daughter has behaved infa-
mously to us. She has quitted us
without saying by your leave or
with your leave. And her wages
were almost the only thing left to us; for Philip is
not like Walter Gerard, you see: he cannot earn two
pounds a week, though why he cannot 1 never could
understand.'

'Hush, hush, wife!' said Warner. '1 speak, I ap-
prehend, to Gerard's daughter ? '
'Just so.'

'Ah! this is good and kind; this is like old times,
for Walter Gerard was my friend, when 1 was not
exactly as 1 am nov/.'

'He tells me so: he sent a messenger to me last
night to visit you this morning. Your letter reached
him only yesterday.'

'Harriet was to give it to Caroline,' said the wife.
'That's the girl who has done all the mischief and
inveigled her away. And she has left Trafford's
works, has she? Then I will be bound she and Har-
riet are keeping house together.'
(170)

SYBIL

171

*You suffer?' said Sybil, moving to the bedside
of the woman. 'Give me your hand/ she added in
a soft sweet tone. * 'Tis hot.'

' I feel very cold,' said the woman. * Warner would
have the window open, till the rain came in.'

*And you, I fear, are wet,' said Warner, address-
ing Sybil, and interrupting his wife.

'Very slightly. And you have no fire. Ah! I
have brought some things for you, but not fuel.'

Mf he would only ask the person down stairs,'
said his wife, 'for a block of coal; I tell him, neigh-
bours could hardly refuse; but he never will do any-
thing; he says he has asked too often.'

'I will ask,' said Sybil. 'But first, I have a
companion without,' she added, 'who bears a basket
for you. Come in, Harold.'

The baby began to cry the moment a large dog
entered the room; a young bloodhound of the ancient
breed, such as are now found but in a few old halls
and granges in the north of England. Sybil untied
the basket, and gave a piece of sugar to the scream-
ing infant. Her glance was sweeter even than her
remedy; the infant stared at her with his large
blue eyes, for an instant astonished, and then he
smiled.

'Oh! beautiful child!' exclaimed Sybil; and she
took the babe up from the mattress and embraced it.

'You are an angel from heaven,' exclaimed the
mother, ' and you may well say beautiful. And only
to think of that infamous girl, Harriet, to desert us
all in this way!'

Sybil drew forth the contents of the convent basket,
and called Warner's attention to them. 'Now,' she
said, ' arrange all this as I tell you, and 1 will go down

172 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

stairs and speak to them below as you wish. Harold,
rest there;' and the dog laid himself down in the re-
motest corner.

*And is that Gerard's daughter?' said the weaver's
wife.

'Only think what it is to gain two pounds a week,
and bring up your daughters in that way, instead of
such shameless hussies as our Harriet! But with such
wages one can do anything. What have you there,
Warner? Is that tea? Oh! I should like some tea.
I do think tea would do me some good. I have quite
a longing for it. Run down, Warner, and ask them
to let us have a kettle of hot water. It is better than
all the fire in the world. Amelia, my dear, do you
see what they have sent us? Plenty to eat. Tell
Maria all about it. You are good girls; you will
never be like that infamous Harriet. When you earn
wages you will give them to your poor mother and
baby, won't you?'

'Yes, mother,' said Amelia.

'And father, too,' said Maria.

'And father, too,' said the wife. 'He has been a
very good father to you all; and I never can under-
stand why one who works so hard should earn so little;
but I beheve it is the fault of those machines. The
police ought to put them down, and then everybody
v/ould be comfortable.'

Sybil and Warner re-entered; the fire was lit, the
tea made, the meal partaken of. An air of comfort,
even of enjoyment, was diffused over this chamber,
but a few minutes back so desolate and unhappy.

'Well,' said the wife, raising herself a little up in
her bed, ' I feel as if that dish of tea had saved my
life. Amelia, have you had any tea ? And Maria ?

SYBIL

173

You see what it is to be good, girls; the Lord will
never desert you. The day is fast coming when that
Harriet will know what the want of a dish of tea is,
with all her fine wages. And I am sure,' she added,
addressing Sybil, 'what we all owe to you is not to
be told. Your father well deserves his good fortune,
with such a daughter.'

' My father's fortunes are not much better than his
neighbours',' said Sybil, 'but his wants are few; and
who should sympathise with the poor but the poor?
Alas! none else can. Besides, it is the Superior of
our convent that has sent you this meal. What my
father can do for you I have told your husband. 'Tis
little; but with the favour of Heaven it may avail.
When the people support the people, the Divine bless-
ing will not be wanting.'

' 1 am sure the Divine blessing will never be want-
ing to you,' said Warner, in a voice of emotion.

There was silence; the querulous spirit of the wife
was subdued by the tone of Sybil; she revolved in her
mind the present and the past; the children pursued
their ungrudged and unusual meal; the daughter of
Gerard, that she might not interfere with their occu-
pation, walked to the window and surveyed the chink
of troubled sky which was visible in the court. The
wind blew in gusts; the rain beat against the glass.
Soon after this, there was another knock at the door.
Harold started from his repose, and growled. Warner
rose, and saying, 'They have come for the rent.
Thank God, I am ready,' advanced and opened the
door. Two men offered with courtesy to enter.

'We are strangers,* said he who took the lead,
'but would not be such. I speak to Warner?'

'My name.'

174 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'And I am your spiritual pastor, if to be the vicar
of Mowbray entitles me to that description.'
'Mr. St. Lys.'

'The same. One of the most valued of my flock,
and the most influential person in this district, has
been speaking much of you to me this morning.
You are working for him. He did not hear of you
on Saturday night; he feared you were ill. Mr. Barber
spoke to me of your distress, as well as of your
good character. I came to express to you my re-
spect and my sympathy, and to offer you my assist-
ance.'

'You are most good, sir, and Mr. Barber too; and
indeed, an hour ago, we were in as great straits — '

'And are now, sir,' exclaimed his wife, interrupt-
ing him. ' I have been in this bed a week, and may
never rise from it again; the children have no clothes;
they are pawned; everything is pawned; this morning
we had neither fuel nor food. And we thought you
had come for the rent, which we cannot pay. If it
had not been for a dish of tea which was charitably
given me this morning by a person almost as poor
as ourselves, — that is to say, they live by labour,
though their wages are much higher, as high as two
pounds a week, though how that can be I never
shall understand, when my husband is working
twelve hours a day, and gaining only a penny an
hour — if it had not been for this I should have been
a corpse; and yet he says we were in straits, merely
because Walter Gerard's daughter, who I willingly
grant is an angel from heaven for all the good she
has done us, has stepped in to our aid. But the
poor supporting the poor, as she well says, what
good can come from that?'

SYBIL

175

During this ebullition, Mr. St. Lys had surveyed
the apartment and recognised Sybil.

'Sister,' he said, when the wife of Warner had
ceased, 'this is not the first time we have met under
the roof of sorrow.'

Sybil bent in silence, and moved as if she were
about to retire; the wind and rain came dashing
against the window. The companion of Mr. St. Lys,
who was clad in a rough great-coat, and was shak-
ing the wet off an oilskin hat known by the name
of a 'south-wester,' advanced and said to her, 'It is
but a squall, but a severe one; I would recommend
you to stay for a few minutes.'

She received this remark with courtesy, but did
not reply.

'I think,' continued the companion of Mr. St. Lys,
'that this is not the first time also that we have
met.?'

'I cannot recall our meeting before,' said Sybil.

'And yet it was not many days past; though
the sky was so different, that it would almost
make one believe it was in another land and another
cHme.'

Sybil looked at him as if for explanation.
'It was at Marney Abbey,' said the companion of
Mr. St. Lys.

'I was there; and 1 remember when about to re-
join my companions, they were not alone.'

'And you disappeared, very suddenly I thought;
for I left the ruins almost at the same moment as
your friends, yet I never saw any of you again.'

'We took our course; a very rugged one; you
perhaps pursued a more even way.'

'Was it your first visit to Marney?'

176 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

*My first and my last. There was no place I
more desired to see; no place of which the vision
made me so sad.'

'The glory has departed,' said Egremont, mourn-
fully.

'It is not that/ said Sybil; *1 was prepared for
decay, but not for such absolute desecration. The
Abbey seems a quarry for materials to repair farm-
houses; and the nave a cattle gate. What people they
must be — that family of sacrilege who hold these
lands!'

'Hem!' said Egremont. 'They certainly do not
appear to have much feeling for ecclesiastical art.'

'And for little else, as we were told,' said Sybil.
'There was a fire at the Abbey farm the day we
were there, and, from all that reached us, it would
appear the people were as little tended as the Abbey
walls.'

'They have some difficulty perhaps in employing
their population in those parts.'
'You know the country?'

'Not at all; 1 was travelling in the neighbourhood,
and made a diversion for the sake of seeing an Abbey
of which 1 had heard so much.'

'Yes; it was the greatest of the Northern Houses.
But they told me the people were most wretched
round the Abbey; nor do 1 think there is any other
cause for their misery, than the hard hearts of the
family that have got the lands.'

'You feel deeply for the people!' said Egremont,
looking at her earnestly.

Sybil returned him a glance expressive of some
astonishment, and then said, ' And do not you ? Your
presence here assures me of it.'

SYBIL

177

' I humbly follow one who would comfort the un-
happy.'

'The charity of Mr. St. Lys is known to all.'

*And you — you, too, are a ministering angel.'

'There is no merit in my conduct, for there is no
sacrifice. When I remember what this English people
once was; the truest, the freest, and the bravest, the
best-natured and the best-looking, the happiest and
most religious race upon the surface of this globe;
and think of them now, with all their crimes and all
their slavish sufferings, their soured spirits and their
stunted forms; their lives without enjoyment, and
their deaths without hope, I may well feel for them,
even if I were not the daughter of their blood.'

And that blood mantled to her cheek as she ceased
to speak, and her dark eye gleamed with emotion,
and an expression of pride and courage hovered on
her brow. Egremont caught her glance and withdrew
his own; his heart was troubled.

St. Lys, who had been in conference with the
weaver, left him and went to the bedside of his wife.
Warner advanced to Sybil, and expressed his feelings
for her father, his sense of her goodness. She, ob-
serving that the squall seemed to have ceased, bade
him farewell, and calling Harold, quitted the chamber.

14 B. D.— 12

CHAPTER XXI.

A Noble Duke.

HERE have you been all the morning,
Charles ? ' said Lord Marney, coming
into his brother's dressing-room a
few minutes before dinner: * Ara-
bella had made the nicest little
riding party for you and Lady
Joan, and you were to be found nowhere. If you go
on in this way, there is no use in having affectionate
relations, or anything else.'

' I have been walking about ?vlowbray. One should
see a factory once in one's life.'

'I don't see the necessity,' said Lord Marney; *I
never saw one, and never intend. Though, to be
sure, when I hear the rents that Mowbray gets for
his land in this neighbourhood, 1 must say I wish the
worsted works had answered at Marney. And if it
had not been for our poor dear father, they would.'

* Our family have always been against manufacto-
ries, railroads — everything,' said Egremont.

'Railroads are very good things, with high com-
pensation,' said Lord Marney; 'and manufactories not
so bad, with high rents; but, after all, these are enter-
prises for the canaille, and 1 hate them in my heart.'
'But they employ the people, George.'
(178)

SYBIL

179

'The people do not want employment; it is the
greatest mistake in the world; all this employment is
a stimulus to population. Never mind that; what 1
came in for is, to tell you that both Arabella and my-
self think you talk too much to Lady Maud/

M like her the best.'

'What has that to do with it, my dear fellow?
Business is business. Old Mowbray will make an
elder son out of his elder daughter. The affair is
settled; I know it from the best authority. Talking
to Lady Maud is insanity. It is all the same for her
as if Fitz-Warene had never died. And then that
great event, which ought to be the foundation of your
fortune, would be perfectly thrown away. Lady Maud,
at the best, is nothing more than twenty thousand
pounds and a fat living. Besides, she is engaged to
that parson fellow, St. Lys.'

'St. Lys told me to-day that nothing would ever
induce him to marry. He would practise celibacy,
though he would not enjoin it.'

'Enjoin fiddle-stick! How came you to be talking
to such a sanctified impostor; and, I believe, with all
his fine phrases, a complete radical ? I tell you what,
Charles, you must really make way with Lady Joan.
The grandfather has come to-day, the old duke.
Quite a family party. It looks so well. Never was
such a golden opportunity. And you must be sharp
too. That little Jermyn, with his brown eyes and
his white hands, has not come down here, in the
month of August, with no sport of any kind, for
nothing.'

'I shall set Lady Firebrace at him.'
'She is quite your friend, and a very sensible
woman too, Charles, and an ally not to be despised.

i8o BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Lady Joan has a high opinion of her. There's the
bell. Well, I shall tell Arabella that you mean to put
up the steam, and Lady Firebrace shall keep Jermyn
off. And perhaps it is as well you did not seem too
eager at first. Mowbray Castle, my dear fellow, in
spite of its manufactories, is not to be despised. And
with a little firmness, you could keep the people out
of your park. Mowbray could do it, only he has no
pluck. He is afraid people would say he was the son
of a footman.'

The duke, who was the father of the Countess de
Mowbray, was also lord-lieutenant of the county.
Although advanced in years, he was still extremely
handsome, with the most winning manners; full of
amenity and grace. He had been a rou^ in his youth,
but seemed now the perfect representative of a be-
nignant and virtuous old age. He was universally
popular; admired by young men, adored by young
ladies. Lord de Mowbray paid him the most distin-
guished consideration. It was genuine. However
maliciously the origin of his own father might be rep-
resented, nobody could deprive him of that great fact,
his father-in-law; a duke, a duke of a great house
who had intermarried for generations with great
houses, one of the old nobility, and something even
loftier.

The county of which his Grace was lord-Iieutenant
was proud of its nobility; and certainly with Marney
Abbey at one end, and Mowbray Castle at the other,
it had just cause; but both these illustrious houses
yielded in importance, though not in possessions, to
the great peer who was the governor of the province.

A French actress, clever as French actresses always
are, had persuaded, once upon a time, an easy-tern-

SYBIL

i8i

pered monarch of this realm, that the paternity of her
coming babe was a distinction of which his Majesty
might be proud. His Majesty did not much believe
her; but he was a sensible man, and never disputed
a point with a woman; so when the babe was born,
and it proved a boy, he christened him with his name;
and elevated him to the peerage in his cradle by the
title of Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine and Marquis of Gascony.

An estate the royal father could not endow him
with, for he had spent all his money, mortgaged all
his resources, and was obliged to run in debt himself
for the jewels of the rest of his mistresses; but he
did his best for the young peer, as became an affec-
tionate father or a fond lover. His Majesty made
him, when he arrived at man's estate, the hereditary
keeper of a palace which he possessed in the north of
England; and this secured his Grace a castle and a
park. He could wave his flag and kill his deer; and
if he had only possessed an estate, he would have
been as well off as if he had helped to conquer the
realm with King William, or plundered the Church
for King Harry. A revenue must, however, be found
for the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, and it was furnished
without the interference of Parliament, but with a
financial dexterity worthy of that assembly, to whom
and not to our sovereigns we are obliged for the pub-
lic debt. The king granted the duke and his heirs
for ever a pension on the post-office, a light tax
upon coals shipped to London, and a tithe of all the
shrimps caught on the southern coast. This last
source of revenue became in time, with the develop-
ment of watering-places, extremely prolific. And so,
what with the foreign courts and colonies for the
younger sons, it was thus contrived very respectably

i82 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

to maintain the hereditary dignity of this great peer.

The present Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine had supported
the Reform Bill, but had been shocked by the ap-
propriation clause; very much admired Lord Stanley,
and was apt to observe that, if that nobleman had
been the leader of the Conservative party, he hardly
knew what he might not have done himself. But
the duke was an old Whig, had lived with old Whigs
all his life, feared revolution, but still more the neces-
sity of taking his name out of Brooks's, where he had
looked in every day or night since he came of age.
So, not approving of what was going on, yet not
caring to desert his friends, he withdrew, as the
phrase runs, from public life; that is to say, was
rarely in his seat; did not continue to Lord Melbourne
the proxy that had been entrusted to Lord Grey; and
made Tory magistrates in his county, though a Whig
lord-lieutenant.

When forces were numbered, and speculations on
the future indulged in by the Tadpoles and Tapers,
the name of the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine was mentioned
with a knowing look, and in a mysterious tone. Noth-
ing more was necessary between Tadpole and Taper;
but, if some hack m statu pupillari happened to be
present at the conference, and the gentle novice,
greedy for party tattle, and full of admiring reverence
for the two great hierophants of petty mysteries be-
fore him, ventured to intimate his anxiety for initia-
tion, the secret was entrusted to him, 'that all was
right there; that his Grace only watched his oppor-
tunity; that he was heartily sick of the present men;
indeed, would have gone over with Lord Stanley in
1835, had he not had a fit of the gout, which prevented
him from coming up from the north; and though, to

SYBIL

be sure, his son and brother did vote against the
Speaker, still that was a mistake; if a letter had been
sent, which was not written, they would have voted
the other way, and perhaps Sir Robert might have
been in at the present moment.*

The Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine was the great staple
of Lady Firebrace's correspondence with Mr. Tadpole.
' Woman's mission ' took the shape, to her intelligence,
of getting over his Grace to the Conservatives. She
was much assisted in these endeavours by the infor-
mation which she so dexterously acquired from the
innocent and incautious Lord Masque.

Egremont was seated at dinner to-day by the side
of Lady Joan. Unconsciously to himself, this had
been arranged by Lady Marney. The action of woman
on our destiny is unceasing. Egremont was scarcely
in a happy mood for conversation. He was pensive,
inclined to be absent; his thoughts, indeed, were of
other things and persons than those around him.
Lady Joan, however, only required a listener; she did
not make inquiries Hke Lady Maud, or impart her own
impressions by suggesting them as your own. Lady
Joan gave Egremont an account of the Aztec cities,
of which she had been reading that morning, and of
the several historical theories which their discovery
had suggested; then she imparted her own, which
differed from all, but which seemed clearly the right
one. Mexico led to Egypt. Lady Joan was as familiar
with the Pharaohs as with the Caciques of the new
world. The phonetic system was despatched by the
way. Then came Champollion; then Paris; then all its
celebrities, literary and especially scientific; then came
the letter from Arago received that morning; and the
letter from Dr. Buckland expected to-morrow. She

i84 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

was delighted that one had written; wondered why
the other had not. Finally, before the ladies had re-
tired, she had invited Egremont to join Lady Marney
, in a visit to her observatory, where they were to be-
hold a comet which she had been the first to detect.

Lady Firebrace, next to the duke, indulged in
mysterious fiddle-faddle as to the state of parties.
She, too, had her correspondents, and her letters
received or awaited. Tadpole said this; Lord Masque,
on the contrary, said that: the truth lay, perhaps,
between them; some result, developed by the clear
inteUigence of Lady Firebrace, acting on the data
with which they supplied her. The duke listened
with calm excitement to the transcendental revelations
of his Egeria. Nothing appeared to be concealed from
her; the inmost mind of the sovereign; there was not
a royal prejudice that was not mapped in her secret
inventory; the cabinets of the Whigs, and the clubs
of the Tories, she had the 'open sesame' to all of
them. Sir Somebody did not want office, though he
pretended to; and Lord Nobody did want office, though
he pretended he did not. One great man thought the
pear was not ripe; another that it was quite rotten;
but then the first was coming on the stage, and the
other was going off. In estimating the accuracy of
a pohtical opinion, one should take into consideration
the standing of the opinionist.

At the right moment, and when she was sure she
was not overheard. Lady Firebrace played her trump
card, the pack having been previously cut by Mr.
Tadpole.

'And whom do you think Sir Robert would send
to Ireland?' and she looked up in the face of the
Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine.

SYBIL

*I suppose the person he sent before,' said his
Grace.

Lady Firebrace shook her head.

'Lord Haddington will not go to Ireland again,'
replied her ladyship, mysteriously; 'mark me. And
Lord de Grey does not like to go; and if he did,
there are objections. And the Duke of Northumber-
land, he will not go. And who else is there? We
must have a nobleman of the highest rank for Ireland;
one who has not mixed himself up with Irish ques-
tions; who has always been in old days for emanci-
pation; a Conservative, not an Orangeman. You
understand. That is the person Sir Robert will send,
and whom Sir Robert wants.'

'He will have some difficulty in finding such a
person,' said the duke. 'If, indeed, the blundering
affair of 1834 had not occurred, and things had taken
their legitimate course, and we had seen a man like
Lord Stanley, for instance, at the head of affairs, or
leading a great party, why then indeed your friends
the Conservatives, for every sensible man must be a
Conservative, in the right sense of the word, would
, have stood in a very different position; but now — /
and his Grace shook his head.

'Sir Robert will never consent to form a govern-
ment again without Lord Stanley,' said Lady Fire-
brace.

'Perhaps not,' said the duke.

'Do you know whose name I have heard men-
tioned in a certain quarter as the person Sir Robert
would wish to see in Ireland?' continued Lady Fire-
brace.

His Grace lent his ear.

'The Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine,' said Lady Firebrace.

i86 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Quite impossible/ said the duke. *I am no party
man; if I be anything, I am a supporter of the gov-
ernment. True it is, I do not like the way they are
going on, and I disapprove of all their measures; but
we must stand by our friends, Lady Firebrace. To
be sure, if the country were in danger, and the Queen
personally appealed to one, and the Conservative party
were really a Conservative party, and not an old crazy
faction, vamped up, and whitewashed into decency,
one might pause and consider. But I am free to con-
fess I must see things in a very different condition
from what they are at present, before I could be called
upon to take that step. I must see men like Lord
Stanley — *

' I know what you are going to say, my dear
Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine. I tell you again. Lord Stan-
ley is with us heart and soul; and before long I feel
persuaded I shall see your Grace in the Castle of Dub-
lin.'

'I am too old; at least, I am afraid so,' said the
Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, with a relenting smile.

CHAPTER XXII.

A Fishing Trip and What
Came of It.

BOUT three miles before it reaches
the town, the river Mowe undulates
through a plain. The scene, though
not very picturesque, has a glad
and sparkling character. A stone
bridge unites the opposite banks
by three arches of good proportion; the land about
consists of meads of a vivid colour, or vegetable
gardens to supply the neighbouring population, and
whose various hues give life and lightness to the
level ground. The immediate boundaries of the plain
on either side are chiefly woods; above the crest of
which in one direction expands the brown bosom of
a moor. The cottages which are sprinkled about this
scene, being built of stone, and on an ample scale,
contribute to the idea of comfort and plenty which,
with a serene sky and on a soft summer day, the
traveller willingly associates with it.

Such were the sky and season in which Egremont
emerged on this scene, a few days after the incidents
recorded in our last chapter. He had been fishing in
the park of Mowbray, and had followed the rivulet
through many windings until, quitting the enclosed

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1 88 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

domain, it had forced its way through some craggy
underwood at the bottom of the hilly moors we have
noticed, and, finally entering the plain, lost itself in
the waters of the greater stream.

Good sport had not awaited Egremont. Truth to
say, his rod had played in a careless hand. He had
taken it, though an adept in the craft when in the
mood, rather as an excuse to be alone than a means
to be amused. There are seasons in life when soli-
tude is a necessity; and such a one had now de-
scended on the spirit of the brother of Lord Marney.

The form of Sybil Gerard was stamped upon his
brain. It blended with all his thoughts; it haunted
every object. Who was this girl, unlike all women
whom he had yet encountered, who spoke with such
sweet seriousness of things of such vast import, but
which had never crossed his mind, and with a kind
of mournful majesty bewailed the degradation of her
race? The daughter of the lowly, yet proud of her
birth. Not a noble lady in the land who could boast
a mien more complete, and none of them thus gifted,
who possessed withal the fascinating simplicity that
pervaded every gesture and accent of the daughter of
Gerard.

Yes! the daughter of Gerard; the daughter of a
workman at a factory. It had not been difficult, after
the departure of Sybil, to extract this information
from the garrulous wife of the weaver. And that
father,— he was not unknown to Egremont. His
proud form and generous countenance were still fresh
in the mind's eye of our friend. Not less so his
thoughtful speech; full of knowledge and meditation
and earnest feeling! How much that he had spoken
still echoed in the heart and rung in the brooding

SYBIL

189

ear of Egremont. And his friend, too, that pale man
with those glittering eyes, who, without affectation,
without pedantry, with artlessness on the' contrary,
and a degree of earnest singleness, had glanced like
a master of philosophy at the loftiest principles of
political science, was he too a workman? And are
these then the People ? If so, thought Egremont
would that I lived more among them! Compared
with their converse, the tattle of our saloons has in
it something humiliating. It is not merely that it is
deficient in warmth, and depth, and breadth; that it
is always discussing persons instead of principles,
and cloaking its want of thought in mimetic dogmas,
and its want of feeling in superficial raillery; it is not
merely that it has neither imagination, nor fancy, nor
sentiment, nor feeling, nor knowledge to recommend
it; but it appears to me, even as regards manner and
expression, inferior in refinement and phraseology; in
short, trivial, uninteresting, stupid, really vulgar.

It seemed to Egremont that, from the day he met
these persons in the Abbey ruins, the horizon of his
experience had insensibly expanded; more than that,
there were streaks of light breaking in the distance,
which already gave a new aspect to much that was
known, and which perhaps was ultimately destined
to reveal much that was now utterly obscure. He
could not resist the conviction that, from the time in
question, his sympathies had become more lively and
more extended; that a masculine impulse had been
given to his mind; that he was inclined to view pub-
lic questions in a light very different from that in
which he had surveyed them a few weeks back,
when on the hustings of his borough.

Revolving these things, he emerged, as we have

I90 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

stated, into the plain of the Mowe, and, guiding his
path by the course of the river, he arrived at the
bridge which a fancy tempted him to cross. In its
centre was a man gazing on the waters below and
leaning over the parapet. His footstep roused the
loiterer, who looked round; and Egremont saw that
it was Walter Gerard.

Gerard returned his salute, and said, 'Early hours
on Saturday afternoon make us all saunterers;' and
then, as their way was the same, they walked on
together. It seemed that Gerard's cottage was near
at hand, and, having inquired after Egremont's sport,
and receiving for a reply a present of a brace of
trout, — the only one, by-the-bye, that was in Egre-
mont's basket, — he could scarcely do less than invite
his companion to rest himself.'

'There is my home,' said Gerard, pointing to a
cottage recently built, and in a pleasing style. Its
materials were of a fawn-coloured stone, common in
the Mowbray quarries. A scarlet creeper clustered
round one side of its ample porch; its windows were
large, mullioned, and neatly latticed; it stood in the
midst of a garden of no mean dimensions, but every
bed and nook of which teemed with cultivation;
flowers and vegetables both abounded, while an
orchard rich with the promise of many fruits — ripe
pears and famous pippins of the north and plums of
every shape and hue — screened the dwelling from
that wind against which the woods that formed its
background were no protection.

'And you are well lodged! Your garden does
you honour.'

'I'll be honest enough to own I have no claim to
the credit,' said Gerard. 'I am but a lazy chiel.'

SYBIL

191

They entered the cottage where a hale old woman
greeted them.

*She is too old to be my wife, and too young to
be my mother,' said Gerard, smiling; 'but she is a
good creature, and has looked after me many a long
day. Come, dame,' he said, 'thou'lt bring us a cup
of tea; 'tis a good evening beverage,' he added, turn-
ing to Egremont, ' and what I ever take at this time.
And if you care to light a pipe, you will find a com-
panion.'

*I have renounced tobacco,' said Egremont; * to-
bacco is the tomb of love, ' and they entered a neatly-
furnished chamber, having that habitable look which
the best room of a farm-house too often wants. In-
stead of the cast-off furniture of other establishments,
at the same time dingy and tawdry, mock rosewood
chairs and tarnished mahogany tables, it contained an
oaken table, some cottage chairs made of beech-wood,
and a Dutch clock. But what surprised Egremont
was the appearance of several shelves well lined with
volumes. Their contents, too, on closer inspection
were remarkable. They indicated a student of a high
order. Egremont read the titles of works which he
only knew by fame, but which treated of the loftiest
and most subtle questions of social and political phi-
losophy. As he was throwing his eyes over them,
his companion said, * Ah ! I see you think me as great
a scholar as I am a gardener; but with as little justice;
these books are not mine.'

*To whomsoever they belong,' said Egremont, Mf
we are to judge from his collection, he has a tolerably
strong head.'

*Ay, ay,' said Gerard, 'the world will hear of
him yet, though he was only a workman, and the

192 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

son of a workman. He has not been at your schools
and your colleges, but he can write his mother tongue
as Shakespeare and Cobbett wrote it; and you must
do that, if you wish to influence the people.'

'And might I ask his name?' said Egremont.

'Stephen Morley, my friend.'

'The person I saw with you at Marney Abbey?'

'The same.'

'And he lives with you?'

' Why, we kept house together, if you would call
it so. Stephen does not give much trouble in
that way. He only drinks water and only eats herbs
and fruits. He is the gardener,' added Gerard, smil-
ing. ' 1 don't know how we shall fare when he
leaves me.'

'And is he going to leave you?'

' Why, in a manner he has gone. He has taken
a cottage about a quarter of a mile up dale, and only

left his books here because he is going into shire

in a day or two, on some business that maybe will take
him a week or so. The books are safer here, you see,
for the present, for Stephen lives alone, and is a good
deal away, for he edits a paper at Mowbray, and
that must be looked after. He is to be my gardener
still. I promised him that. Well done, dame,' said
Gerard, as the old woman entered; '1 hope, for the
honour of the house, a good brew. Now, comrade,
sit down: it will do you good after your long stroll.
You should eat your own trout if you would wait.'

' By no means. You will miss your friend, I
should think.'

'We shall see a good deal of him, I doubt not,
what with the garden and neighbourhood and so on;
besides, in a manner, he is master of his own time.

SYBIL

193

His work is not like ours; and though the pull on
the brain is sometimes great, I have often wished I
had a talent that way. It's a drear life to do the
same thing every day at the same hour. But I never
could express my ideas except with my tongue; and
there I feel tolerably at home.'

*It will be a pity to see this room without these
books,' said Egremont, encouraging conversation on
domestic subjects.

*So it will,' said Gerard. M have got very few of
my own. But my daughter will be able to fill the
shelves in time, 1 warrant.'

* Your daughter; she is coming to Hve with you?'
*Yes; that is the reason why Stephen quits us.

He only remained here until Sybil could keep my
house, and that happy day is at hand.'

* That is a great compensation for the loss of your
friend,' said Egremont.

*And yet she talks of flitting,' said Gerard, in rather
a melancholy tone. 'She hankers after the clois-
ter. She has passed a still, sweet life in the convent
here; the Superior is the sister of my employer and
a very saint on earth; and Sybil knows nothing of
the real world except its sufferings. No matter,' he
added more cheerfully; M would not have her take
the veil rashly, but, if I lose her, it may be for the
best. For the married life of a woman of our class,
in the present condition of our country, is a lease of
woe,' he added, shaking his head, * slaves, and the
slaves of slaves! Even woman's spirit cannot stand ~
against it; and it can bear up against more than we
can master.*

* Your daughter is not made for the common cares
of life,' said Egremont.

14 B. D.— 13

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'We'll not talk of them,' said Gerard. 'Sybil has
an English heart, and that's not easily broken. And
you, comrade, you are a traveller in these parts, eh?'

'A kind of traveller; something in the way of
your friend Morley — connected with the press.'

'Indeed! a reporter, eh? 1 thought you had some-
thing about you a little more knowing than we pro-
vincials.'

'Yes; a reporter. They want information in Lon-
don as to the real state of the country, and this time
of the year, Parliament not sitting — '

'Ah; 1 understand, a flying commission and a
summer tour. Well, I often wish I were a penman;
but 1 never could do it. I'll read any day as long as
you like, but that writing 1 could never manage. My
friend Morley is a powerful hand at it. His journal
circulates a good deal about here; and if, as I often
tell him, he would only sink his high-flying philoso-
phy and stick to old English politics, he might make
a property of it. You'll hke to know him?'

'Much.'

'And what first took you to the press, if I may
ask ? '

'Why — my father was a gentleman,' said Egre-
mont in a hesitating tone, 'and I was a younger
son.'

'Ah!' said Gerard, 'that is as bad as being a
woman.'

*I had no patrimony,' continued Egremont, 'and
I was obliged to work; I had no head, I believe, for
the law; the Church was not exactly in my way; and
as for the army, how was I to advance without money
or connections ? I had had some education, and so I
thought I would turn it to account.'

SYBIL

195

'Wisely done! you are one of the working classes,
and will enlist, 1 hope, in the great struggle against
the drones. The natural friends of the people are
younger sons, though they are generally enlisted
against us. The more fools they, to devote their en-
ergies to the maintenance of a system which is
founded on selfishness and which leads to fraud; and
of which they are the first victims. But every man
thinks he will be an exception.'

'And yet,' said Egremont, 'a great family, rooted
in the land, has been deemed to be an element of
political strength.'

'I'll tell you what,' said Gerard, 'there is a great
family in this country, and rooted in it, of which we
have heard much less than they deserved, but of
which I suspect we shall very soon hear enough to
make us all think a bit.'

' In this county ? '

'Ay; in this county and every other one'. I mean
the People.'

'Ah!' said Egremont, 'that family has existed for
a long time.'

' But it has taken to increase rapidly of late, my
friend — how may I call you?'
'They call me Franklin.'

'A good English name of a good English class
that has disappeared. Well, Mr. Franklin, be sure of
this, that the population returns of this country are
very instructive reading.'

'I can conceive so.'

'I became a man when the bad times were be-
ginning,' said Gerard; 'I have passed through many
doleful years. I was a Franklin's son myself, and we
had lived on this island at least no worse for a longer

196 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

time than I care to recollect, as little as what I am
now. But that's nothing; I am not thinking of my-
self. I am prosperous in a fashion; it is the serfs I
live among of whom I am thinking. Well, I have
heard, in the course of years, of some specifics for
this constant degradation of the people; some thing
or some person that was to put all right; and for my
part, I was not unready to support any proposal or
follow any leader. There was reform, and there was
paper money, and no machinery, and a thousand
other remedies; and there were demagogues of all
kinds, some as base as myself, and some with blood
in their veins almost as costly as flows in those of
our great neighbour here. Earl de Mowbray, — and I
have always heard that was very choice; but I will
frankly own to you, I never had much faith in any of
these proposals or proposers; still, they were a change,
and that is something. But I have been persuaded of
late that there is something going on in this country
of more efficacy; a remedial power, as I believe, and
irresistible; but whether remedial or not, at any rate
a power that will mar all or cure all. You apprehend
me ? I speak of the annual arrival of more than three
hundred thousand strangers in this island. How will
you feed them ? How will you clothe them ? How
will you house them ? They have given up butcher's
meat; must they give up bread? And as for raiment
and shelter, the rags of the kingdom are exhausted,
and your sinks and cellars already swarm like rabbit
warrens.'

"Tis an awful consideration,' said Egremont, mus-
ing.

'Awful,' said Gerard; "tis the most solemn thing
since the deluge. What kingdom can stand against

SYBIL

197

it? Why, go to your history — you're a scholar — and
see the fall of the great Roman empire; what was
that? Every now and then there came two or three
hundred thousand strangers out of the forests, and
crossed the mountains and rivers. They come to us
every year, and in greater numbers. What are your
invasions of the barbarous nations, your Goths and
Visigoths, your Lombards and Huns, to our popula-
tion returns!'

CHAPTER XXIII.

Tragedies of a Mining Town.

HE last rays of the sun contending
I with clouds of smoke that drifted
across the country, partially illu-

mined a pecuHar landscape. Far as

' the eye could reach, and the region
was level, except where a range

of limestone hills formed its distant limit, a wilder-
ness of cottages, or tenements that were hardly en-
titled to a higher name, were scattered for many
miles over the land; some detached, some connected
in little rows, some clustering in groups, yet rarely
forming continuous streets, but interspersed with
blazing furnaces, heaps of burning coal, and piles of
smouldering ironstone; while forges and engine chim-
neys roared and puffed in all directions, and indicated
the frequent presence of the mouth of the mine, and
the bank of the coal-pit. Notwithstanding the whole
country might be compared to a vast rabbit warren,
it was nevertheless intersected with canals, crossing
each other at various levels; and though the subter-
ranean operations were prosecuted with so much
avidity that it was not uncommon to observe whole
rows of houses awry, from the shifting and hollow

(198)

SYBIL

199

nature of the land, still, intermingled with heaps of
mineral refuse, or of metallic dross, patches of the
surface might here and there be recognised, covered,
as if in mockery, with grass and corn, looking very
much like those gentlemen's sons that we used to
read of in our youth, stolen by the chimneysweeps,
and giving some intimations of their breeding beneath
their grimy livery. But a tree or a shrub, such an
existence was unknown in this dingy rather than
dreary region.

It was the twilight hour; the hour at which in
southern climes the peasant kneels before the sunset
image of the blessed Hebrew maiden; when caravans
halt in their long course over vast deserts, and the
turbaned traveller, bending in the sand, pays his
homage to the sacred stone and the sacred city; the
hour, not less holy, that announces the cessation of
English toil, and sends forth the miner and the collier
to breathe the air of earth, and gaze on the light of
heaven.

They come forth: the mine delivers its gang and
the pit its bondsmen; the forge is silent and the en-
gine is still. The plain is covered with the swarming
multitude: bands of stalwart men, broad-chested and
muscular, wet with toil, and black as the children of
the tropics; troops of youth, alas! of both sexes,
though neither their raiment nor their language indi-
cates the difference; all are clad in male attire; and
oaths that men might shudder at issue from lips
born to breathe words of sweetness. Yet these are
to be, some are, the mothers of England! But can
we wonder at the hideous coarseness of their lan-
guage, when we remember the savage rudeness of
their lives ? Naked to the waist, an iron chain

200 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

fastened to a belt of leather runs between their legs
clad in canvas trousers, while on hands and feet an
English girl, for twelve, sometimes for sixteen hours
a day, hauls and hurries tubs of coals up subterranean
roads, dark, precipitous, and plashy; circumstances
that seem to have escaped the notice of the Society
for the Abolition of Negro Slavery. Those worthy
gentlemen, too, appear to have been singularly uncon-
scious of the sufferings of the little trappers, which
was remarkable, as many of them were in their own
employ.

See, too, these emerge from the bowels of the
earth! Infants of four and five years of age, many of
them girls, pretty and still soft and timid; entrusted
with the fulfilment of responsible duties, the very na-
ture of which entails on them the necessity of being
the earliest to enter the mine and the latest to leave
it. Their labour indeed is not severe, for that would
be impossible, but it is passed in darkness and in
solitude. They endure that punishment which phil-
osophical philanthropy has invented for the direst
criminals, and which those criminals deem more ter-
rible than the death for which it is substituted. Hour
after hour elapses, and all that reminds the infant
trappers of the world they have quitted, and that
which they have joined, is the passage of the coal-
waggons for which they open the air-doors of the
galleries, and on keeping which doors constantly
closed, except at this moment of passage, the safety
of the mine and the lives of the persons employed in
it entirely depend.

Sir Joshua, a man of genius and a courtly artist,
struck by the seraphic countenance of Lady Alice
Gordon, when a child of very tender years, painted

SYBIL

20 1

the celestial visage in various attitudes on the same
canvas, and styled the group of heavenly faces guardian
angels !

We would say to some great master of the pencil,
Mr. Landseer, or Mr. Etty, go thou to the little trap-
pers and do likewise!

A small party of miners approached a house of
more pretension than the generality of the dwellings,
and announcing its character by a flagrant sign of the
Rising Sun. They entered it as men accustomed,
and were greeted with smiles and many civil words
from the lady at the bar, who enquired cheerfully
what the gentlemen would have. They soon found
themselves seated in the tap, and, though it was not
entirely unoccupied, in their accustomed places; for
there seemed a general understanding that they en-
joyed a prescriptive right.

With hunches of white bread in their black
hands, and grinning with their sable countenances
*and ivory teeth, they really looked like a gang of
negroes at a revel.

The cups of ale circulated, the pipes were lighted,
the preliminary puffs achieved. There was at length
silence, when he who seemed their leader, and who
filled a sort of president's seat, took his pipe from
his mouth, and then uttering the first complete sen-
tence that had yet been expressed aloud, thus deliv-
ered himself:

*The fact is, we are tommied to death.'

*You never spoke a truer word, Master Nixon,'
said one of his companions.

Mt's gospel, every word of it,' said another.

'And the point is,' continued Master Nixon, 'what
are we for to do ? '

202 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Ay, surely,' said a collier, 'that's the marrow.'

'Ay, ay,' agreed several; 'there it is.'

'The question is,' said Nixon, looking round with
a magisterial air, ' what is wages ? I say, 'tayn't
sugar, 'tayn't tea, 'tayn't bacon. I don't think 'tis
candles; but of this I be sure, 'tayn't waistcoats.'

Here there was a general groan.

'Comrades,' continued Nixon, 'you know what
has happened; you know as how Juggins applied for
his balance after his tommy-book was paid up, and
that incarnate nigger Diggs has made him take two
waistcoats. Now the question rises, what is a collier
to do with waistcoats.? Pawn 'em, 1 s'pose, to Diggs'
son-in-law, next door to his father's shop, and sell
the ticket for sixpence. Now, there's the question;
keep to the question; the question is waistcoats and
tommy; first waistcoats, and then tommy.'

'I have been making a pound a week these two
months past,' said another, 'but, as I'm a sinner
saved, I have never seen the young Queen's picture
yet.'

'And 1 have been obliged to pay the doctor for
my poor wife in tommy,' said another. '"Doctor,"
I said, says 1, "I blush to do it, but all I have got
is tommy, and what shall it be, bacon or cheese?"
"Cheese at tenpence a pound," says he, "which I
buy for my servants at sixpence! Never mind," says
he, for he is a thorough Christian, "I'll take the
tommy as I find it." '

' Juggins has got his rent to pay, and is afeard of
the bums,' said Nixon; 'and he has got two waist-
coats ! '

'Besides,' said another, 'Diggs' tommy is only
open once a-week, and if you're not there in time,

SYBIL

you go over for another seven days. And it's such
a distance, and he keeps a body there such a time;
it's always a day's work for my poor woman; she
can't do nothing after it, what with the waiting, and
the standing, and the cussing of Master Joseph Diggs;
for he do swear at the women, when they rush in
for the first turn, most fearful.'

' They do say he's a shocking little dog.'

* Master Joseph is wery wiolent, but there is no
one like old Diggs for grabbing a bit of one's wages.
He do so love it! And then he says you never need
be at no loss for nothing; you can find everything
under my roof. I should like to know who is to
mend our shoes. Has Gaffer Diggs a cobbler's stall ? '

'Or sell us a penn'orth of potatoes,' said another.
*0r a ha'porth of milk.'

*No; and so to get them one is obHged to go and
sell some tommy, and much one gets for it. Bacon
at ninepence a-pound at Diggs', which you may get
at a huckster's for sixpence; and therefore the huck-
ster can't be expected to give you more than four-
pence-halfpenny, by which token the tommy in our
field just cuts our wages atween the navel.'

'And that's as true as if you heard it in church.
Master Waghorn.'

' This Diggs seems to be an oppressor of the peo-
ple,' said a voice from a distant corner of the room.

Master Nixon looked around, smoked, puffed, and
then said, ' I should think he wor; as bloody-a-hearted
butty* as ever jingled.'

*A butty in the mining districts is a middleman: a doggy is his
manager. The butty generally keeps a tommy, or truck shop, and
pays the wages of his labourers in goods. When miners and colliers
strike, they term it 'going to play.'

204 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'But what business has a butty to keep a shop?'
inquired the stranger. 'The law touches him.'

M should like to know who would touch the law,*
said Nixon; 'not I for one. Them tommy-shops is
very delicate things; they won't stand no handling, I
can tell you that.'

'But he cannot force you to take goods,' said the
stranger; 'he must pay you in current coin of the
realm if you demand it.'

'They only pay us once in five weeks,' said a
collier; 'and how is a man to live meanwhile? And
suppose we were to make shift for a month or five
weeks, and have all our money coming, and have
no tommy out of the shop, what would the butty
say to me? He would say, "Do you want e'er a
note this time?" and if I was to say, "No," then
he would say, "You've no call to go down to
work any more here." And that's what I call forsa-
tion.'

'Ay, ay,' said another collier; 'ask for the young
Queen's picture, and you would soon have to put
your shirt on, and go up the shaft.'

'It's them long reckonings that force us to the
tommy-shops,' said another collier; 'and if a butty
turns you away because you won't take no tommy,
you're a marked man in every field about.'

'There's wuss things as tommy,' said a collier who
had hitherto been silent, ' and that's these here butties.
What's going on in the pit is known only to God
Almighty and the colliers. I have been a consistent
Methodist for many years, strived to do well, and all
the harm I have ever done to the butties was to tell
them that their deeds would not stand on the day of
judgment.'

SYBIL

205

'They are deeds of darkness surely; for many's the
morn we work for nothing, by one excuse or another,
and many's the good stint that they undermeasure.
And many's the cup of their ale that you must drink
before they will give you any work. If the Queen
would do something for us poor men, it would be a
blessed job.'

'There ayn't no black tyrant on this earth like a
butty, surely,' said a collier; 'and there's no redress
for poor men.'

' But why do not you state your grievances to the
landlords and lessees?* said the stranger.

'I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir,'
said Master Nixon, following up this remark by an
enormous puff. He was the oracle of his circle, and
there was silence whenever he was inclined to ad-
dress them, which was not too often, though when
he spoke, his words, as his followers often observed,
were a regular ten-yard coal.

'I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir, or
else you would know that it's as easy for a miner
to speak to a main-master as it is for me to pick
coal with this here clay. Sir, there's a gulf atween
'em. 1 went into the pit when 1 was five year old,
and counts forty year in the service come Martinmas,
and a very good age, sir, for a man that does his
work, and I knows what I'm speaking about. In
forty year, sir, a man sees a pretty deal, 'specially
when he don't move out of the same spot and keeps
his 'tention. I've been at play, sir, several times in
forty year, and have seen as great stick-outs as ever
happened in this country. I've seen the people at play
for weeks together, and so clammed that I never
tasted nothing but a potato and a little salt for more

2o6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

than a fortnight. Talk of tommy, that was hard fare,
but we were holding out for our rights, and that's
sauce for any gander. And Til tell you what, sir,
that I never knew the people play yet, but if a word
had passed atween them and the main-masters afore-
hand, it might not have been settled; but you can't
get at them any way. Atween the poor man and the
gentleman there never was no connection, and that's
the wital mischief of this country.'

Mt's a very true word, Master Nixon, and by this
token that when we went to play in '28, and the
masters said they would meet us, what did they do
but walk about the ground and speak to the butties.
The butties has their ear.'

'We never want no soldiers here if the masters
would speak with the men; but the sight of a pit-
man is pison to a gentleman, and if we go up to
speak with 'em, they always run away.'

Mt's the butties,' said Nixon; 'they're wusser nor
tommy.'

'The people will never have their rights,' said the
stranger, 'until they learn their power. Suppose, in-
stead of sticking out and playing, fifty of your fami-
lies were to live under one roof. You would live
better than you live now; you would feed more fully,
and be lodged and clothed more comfortably, and
you might save half the amount of your wages; you
would become capitalists; you might yourselves hire
your mines and pits from the owners, and pay them
a better rent than they now obtain, and yet yourselves
gain more and work less.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Nixon, taking his pipe from his
mouth, and sending forth a volume of smoke, 'you
speak like a book.'

SYBIL

207

Mt is the principle of association/ said the stranger;
'the want of the age.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Nixon, 'this here age wants a great
deal, but what it principally wants is to have its
wages paid in the current coin of the realm.'

Soon after this there were symptoms of empty
mugs and exhausted pipes, and the party began to
stir. The stranger addressing Nixon, inquired of him
what was their present distance from Wodgate.

'Wodgate!' exclaimed Mr. Nixon with an uncon-
scious air.

'The gentleman means Hell-house Yard,' said one
of his companions.

'I'm at home,' said Mr. Nixon, 'but 'tis the first
time I ever heard Hell-house Yard called Wodgate.'

'It's called so in joggraphy,' said Juggins.

'But you bay'nt going to Hell-house Yard this
time of night!' said Mr. Nixon. 'I'd as soon think
of going down the pit with the windlass turned by
lushy Bob.'

"Tayn't a journey for Christians,' said Juggins.
'They're a very queer lot even in sunshine,' said
another.

'And how far is it?' asked the stranger.

'I walked there once in three hours,' said a col-
lier, 'but that was to the wake. If you want to see
divils carnal, there's your time of day. They're no
less than heathens, I be sure. I'd be sorry to see
even our butty among them, for he is a sort of a
Christian when he has taken a glass of ale.'

CHAPTER XXIV.

A Family Quarrel.

WO days after the visit of Egre-
mont to the cottage of Walter
Gerard, the visit of the Marney
family to Mowbray terminated,
and they returned to the Abbey.
There is something mournful in
the breaking up of an agreeable party, and few are the
roofs under which one has sojourned that are quitted
without some feeling of depression. The sudden ces-
sation of all those sources of excitement which pervade
a gay and well-arranged mansion in the country un-
strings the nervous system. For a week or so, we
have done nothing which was not agreeable, and heard
nothing which was not pleasant. Our self-love has
been respected; there has been a total cessation of petty
cares; all the enjoyment of an establishment without
any of its solicitude. We have beheld civilisation
only in its favoured aspect, and tasted only the sunny
side of the fruit. Sometimes there are associations
with our visit of a still sweeter and softer character,
but on these we need not dwell: glances that cannot
be forgotten, and tones that linger in the ear; senti-
ment that subdues the soul, and flirtation that agitates
(208)

SYBIL

209

the fancy. No matter, whatever may be the cause,
one too often drives away from a country-house rather
hipped. The specific would be immediately to drive to
another, and it is a favourite remedy. But sometimes
it is not in our power; sometimes, for instance, we
must return to our household gods in the shape of a
nursery; and though this was not the form assumed
by the penates of Lord Marney, his presence, the
presence of an individual so important and indefati-
gable, was still required. His lordship had passed his
time at Mowbray to his satisfaction. He had had
his own way in everything. His selfishness had not
received a single shock. He had laid down the law
and it had not been questioned. He had dogmatised
and impugned, and his assertions had passed current^
and his doctrines had been accepted as orthodox.
Lord de Mowbray suited him; he liked the consider-
ation of so great a personage. Lord Marney also
really Hked pomp, a curious table, and a luxurious life ;
but he liked them under any roof rather than his
own. Not that he was what is commonly called a
screw, that is to say, he was not a mere screw; but
he was acute and malicious; saw everybody's worth
and position at a glance; could not bear to expend
his choice wines and costly viands on hangers-on and
toad-eaters, though at the same time no man encour-
aged and required hangers-on and toad-eaters more.
Lord Marney had all the petty social vices, and none
of those petty social weaknesses which soften their
harshness or their hideousness. To receive a prince
of the blood, or a great peer, he would spare noth-
ing. Had he to fulfil any of the public duties of his
station, his performance would baffle criticism. But
he enjoyed making the Vicar of Marney or Captain

14 B. D.— 14

2IO BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Grouse drink some claret that was on the wane, or
praise a bottle of Burgundy that he knew was
pricked.

Little things affect little minds. Lord Marney rose
in no very good humour; he was kept at the station,
which aggravated his spleen. During his journey on
the railroad he spoke Httle, and though he more than
once laboured to get up a controversy he was un-
able, for Lady Marney, who rather dreaded her dulj
home, and was not yet in a tone of mind that could
hail the presence of the little Poinsett as full compen^
sation for the brilliant circle of Mowbray, replied in
amiable monosyllables, and Egremont himself in aus-
tere ones, for he was musing over Sybil Gerard and
a thousand things as wild and sweet.

Everything went wrong this day. Even Captain
Grouse was not at the Abbey to welcome them back.
He was playing in a cricket match, Marney against
Marham. Nothing else would have induced him to
be absent. So it happened that the three fellow-trav-
ellers had to dine together, utterly weary of them-
selves and of each other. Captain Grouse was never
more wanted; he would have amused Lord Marney,
relieved his wife and brother, reported all that had
been said and done in their neighbourhood during
their absence, introduced a new tone, and effected a
happy diversion. Leaving Mowbray, detained at the
station. Grouse away, some disagreeable letters, or
letters which an ill-humoured man chooses to esteem
disagreeable, seemed to announce a climax. Lord
Marney ordered the dinner to be served in the small
dining-room, which was contiguous to a saloon in
which Lady Marney, when they were alone, generally
passed the evening.

SYBIL

211

The dinner was silent and sombre; happily it was
also short. Lord Marney tasted several dishes, ate
of none; found fault with his own claret, though the
butler had given him a choice bottle; praised Lord
Mowbray's, wondered where he got it, 'all the wines
at Mowbray were good;* then for the twentieth time
wondered what could have induced Grouse to fix the
cricket match the day he returned home, though he
chose to forget that he had never communicated to
Grouse even the probable day on which he might be
expected.

As for Egremont, it must be admitted that he
was scarcely in a more contented mood than his
brother, though he had not such insufficient cause
for his dark humours. In quitting Mowbray, he had
quitted something else than merely an agreeable cir-
cle: enough had happened in that visit to stir up the
deep recesses of his heart, and to prompt him to in-
vestigate in an unusual spirit the cause and attributes
of his position. He had found a letter on his return
to the Abbey not calculated to dispel these some-
what morbid feelings; a letter from his agent urging
the settlement of his election accounts, the primary
cause of his visit to his brother.

Lady Marney left the dining-room; the brothers
were alone. Lord Marney filled a bumper, which he
drank off rapidly, pushed the bottle to his brother,
and then said again, 'What a cursed bore it is that
Grouse is not here! '

'Well, I cannot say, George, that I particularly
miss the presence of Captain Grouse,' said his brother.

Lord Marney looked at Egremont pugnaciously,
and then observed, 'Grouse is a capital fellow; one
is never dull when Grouse is here.'

212 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Well, for my part,' said Egremont, M do not
much admire that amusement which is dependent on
the efforts of hangers-on.'

'Grouse is no more a hanger-on than any one
else,' said Lord Marney, rather fiercely.

'Perhaps not,' said Egremont quietly; 'I am no
judge of such sort of people.'

M should like to know what you are a judge of;
certainly not of making yourself agreeable to young
ladies. Arabella cannot be particularly charmed with
the result of your visit to Mowbray, as far as Lady
Joan is concerned, Arabella's most intimate friend, by-
the-bye. If for no other reason, you ought to have
paid her more attention.'

'I cannot pay attention unless I am attracted,* said
Egremont; *I have not the ever-ready talent of your
friend, Captain Grouse.'

' I do not know what you mean by my friend. Cap-
tain Grouse. Captain Grouse is no more my friend
than your friend. One must have people about the
house to do a thousand things which one cannot do
one's self, and which one cannot trust to servants,
and Grouse does all this capitally.'

'Exactly; he is just what 1 said, a capital hanger-on
if you hke, but still a hanger-on.'

' Well, and what then ? Suppose he is a hanger-on;
may I not have hangers-on as well as any other
man ? '

'Of course you may; but I am not bound to regret
their absence.'

'Who said you were? But I will regret their ab-
sence, if I choose. And 1 regret the absence of
Grouse, regret it very much; and if he did happen to
be inextricably engaged in this unfortunate match, I

SYBIL

213

say, and you may contradict me, if you please, that
he ought to have taken care that Slimsy dined here,
to tell me all that had happened.'

'I am very glad he omitted to do so,' said Egre-
mont; 'I prefer Grouse to Slimsy.'

*I dare say you do,' said Lord Marney, filling his
glass and looking very black; 'you would like, I have
no doubt, to see a fine gentleman-saint, like your
friend Mr. St. Lys, at Marney, preaching in cottages,
filling the people with discontent, lecturing me about
low wages, soliciting plots of ground for new churches,
and inveigling Arabella into subscriptions to painted
windows.'

*I certainly should like to see a man like Aubrey
St. Lys at Marney,' said Egremont quietly, but rather
doggedly.

'And if he were here, I would soon see who
should be master,' said Lord Marney; *I would not
succumb hke Mowbray. One might as well have a
Jesuit in the house at once.'

* I dare say St. Lys would care very little about
entering your house,' said Egremont. *I know it was
with great reluctance that he ever came to Mowbray
Castle.'

M dare say; very great reluctance indeed. And
very reluctant he was, I make no doubt, to sit next
to Lady Maud. I wonder he does not fly higher, and
preach to Lady Joan ; but she is too sensible a woman
for such fanatical tricks.'

'St. Lys thinks it his duty to enter all societies.
That is the reason why he goes to Mowbray Castle,
as well as to the squalid courts and cellars of the
town. He takes care that those who are clad in pur-
ple and fine Hnen shall know the state of their neigh-

114 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

bours. They cannot at least plead ignorance for the
non-fulfilment of their duty. Before St. Lys' time, the
family at Mowbray Castle might as well have not ex-
isted, so far as benefiting their miserable vicinage.
It would be well perhaps for other districts not less
wretched, and for other families as high and favoured
as the Mowbrays, if there were a Mr. St. Lys on the
spot instead of a Mr. Slimsey.'

*I suppose that is meant for a cut,* said Lord
Marney; 'but I wish the people were as well off in
every part of the country as they are on my estate.
They get here their eight shillings a week, always at
least seven, and every hand is at this moment in
employ, except a parcel of scoundrels who prefer wood-
stealing and poaching, and who would prefer wood-
stealing and poaching if you gave them double the
wages. The rate of wages is nothing; certainty is
the thing; and every man at Marney may be sure of
his seven shillings a week for at least nine months in
the year; and for the other three, they can go to the
House, and a very proper place for them ; it is heated
with hot air, and has every comfort. Even Marney
Abbey is not heated with hot air. I have often thought
of it; it makes me mad sometimes to think of those
lazy, pampered menials passing their lives with their
backs to a great roaring fire; but I am afraid of the
flues.'

'I wonder, talking of fires, that you are not more
afraid of burning ricks,' said Egremont.

'It's an infernal lie,' said Lord Marney, very vio-
lently.

'What is?' said Egremont.

'That there is any incendiarism in this neighbour-
hood.'

SYBIL

215

'Why, there was a fire the day after I came.'

'That had nothing to do with wages; it was an
accident. I examined into it myself; so did Grouse,
so did SHmsey; I sent them about everywhere. I told
them I was sure the fire was purely accidental, and
to go and see about it; and they came back, and
agreed that it was purely accidental.'

M dare say they did,' said Egremont; 'but no one
has discovered the accident.'

'For my part, I believe it was spontaneous com-
bustion,' said Lord Marney.

'That is a satisfactory solution,' said Egremont;
'but for my part, the fire being a fact, and it being
painfully notorious that the people of Marney — '

'Well, sir, the people of Marney?' said his lord-
ship, fiercely.

'Are without question the most miserable popula-
tion in the county — '

'Did Mr. St. Lys tell you that.?' interrupted Lord
Marney, white with rage.

'No, not Mr. St. Lys, but one better acquainted
with the neighbourhood.'

'I'll know your informanfs name,' said Lord Mar-
ney, with energy.

'My informant was a woman,' said Egremont.

'Lady Maud, I suppose; second-hand from Mr. St.
Lys.'

'My informant was a woman, and one of the
people,' said Egremont.

'Some poacher's drab! 1 don't care what women
say; high or low, they always exaggerate.'

'The misery of a family who live upon seven
or even eight shillings a week can scarcely be exag-
gerated.'

2i6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'What should you know about it? Did you ever
live on seven or eight shillings a week? What can
you know about the people, who pass your time at
London clubs or in fine country houses ? I suppose
you want the people to live as they do at a house
dinner at Boodle's. I say that a family can live well
on seven shilHngs a week, and on eight shillings very
well indeed. The poor are well off, at least the agri-
cultural poor, very well off indeed. Their incomes
are certain, that is a great point, and they have no
cares, no anxieties; they always have a resource, they
always have the House. People without cares do not
require so much food as those whose life entails
anxieties. See how long they live! Compare the
rate of mortality among them with that of the manu-
facturing districts. Incendiarism indeed! If there had
been a proper rural police, such a thing as incen-
diarism would never have been heard of!'

There was a pause. Lord Marney dashed off an-
other bumper; Egremont sipped his wine. At length he
said, 'This argument made me forget the principal
reason, George, why 1 am glad that we are alone
together to-day. I am sorry to bore you, but I am
bored myself deucedly. I find a letter from my
agent. These election accounts must be settled.'

'Why, I thought they were settled.'

'How do you mean?'

'I thought my mother had given you a thousand
pounds.'

'No doubt of that, but that was long ago dis-
posed of.'

'In my opinion quite enough for a seat in these
times. Instead of paying to get into Parliament, a
man ought to be paid for entering it.'

SYBIL

217

'There may be a good deal in what you say,'
said Egremont; 'but it is too late to take that view of
the business. The expense has been incurred and
must be met'

'I don't see that/ said Lord Marney; 'we have
paid one thousand pounds and there is a balance un-
settled. When was there ever a contest without a
balance being unsettled? I remember hearing my
father often say that when he stood for this county,
our grandfather paid more than a hundred thousand
pounds, and yet I know to this day there are accounts
unsettled. Regularly every year I receive anonymous
letters threatening me with .fearful punishment if I
don't pay one hundred and fifty pounds for a break-
fast at the Jolly Tinkers.'

'You jest: the matter indeed requires a serious
vein. I wish these accounts to be settled at once.'

'And 1 should like to know where the funds are
to come from ! I have none. The quantity of barns I
am building now is something tremendous! Then
this rage for draining; it would dry up any purse.
What think you of two million tiles this year? And
rents, to keep up which we are making these awful
sacrifices; they are merely nominal, or soon will be.
They never will be satisfied till they have touched the.
land. That is clear to me. I am prepared for a re-
duction of five-and-twenty per cent.; if the corn-laws
are touched it can't be less than that. My mother
ought to take it into consideration and reduce her
jointure accordingly. But I dare say she will not;
people are so selfish; particularly as she has given
you this thousand pounds, which in fact after all
comes out of my pocket.'

'AH this you have said to me before. What does

2i8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

it mean? I fought this battle at the instigation of
the family, from no feeling of my own. You are the
head of the family, and you were consulted on the
step. Unless I had concluded that it was with your
sanction, I certainly should not have made my appear-
ance on the hustings.'

M am glad you did, though,' said Lord Marney;
'Parliament is a great point for our class; in these
days especially, more even than in the old time. I
was truly rejoiced at your success, and it mortified
the Whigs about us confoundedly. Some people
thought there was only one family in the world to
have their Richmond or their Malton. Getting you in
for the old borough was really a coup.'

'Well, now to retain our interest,' said Egremont,
'quick payment of our expenses is the most efficient
way, beHeve me.'

'You have got six years, perhaps seven,' said Lord
Marney, 'and long before that 1 hope to find you the
husband of Lady Joan Fitz-Warene.'

'I do not wish to connect the two contingencies,*
said Egremont firmly.

'They are inseparable,' said Lord Marney.

'What do you mean.^'

'I mean that I think this pedantic acquittance of
an electioneering account is in the highest degree
ridiculous, and that 1 cannot interfere in it. The le-
gal expenses are, you say, paid; and if they were
not, I should feel myself bound, as the head of the
family, to defray them, but I can go no further. I
cannot bring myself to sanction an expenditure for
certainly unnecessary, perhaps, and 1 much fear it, for
illegal and immoral purposes.'

'That really is your determination?'

SYBIL

* After the most mature reflection, prompted by a
sincere solicitude for your benefit.'

'Well, George, I have often suspected it, but now
I feel quite persuaded, that you are really the greatest
humbug that ever existed.'

'Abuse is not argument, Mr. Egremont.'

* You are beneath abuse, as you are beneath every
sentiment but one, which I entirely feel;' and Egre-
mont rose from the table.

'You may thank your own obstinacy and conceit,'
said Lord Marney. 'I took you to Mowbray Castle,
and the cards were in your own hands if you chose
to play them.'

' You have interfered with me once before on such
a subject. Lord Marney,' said Egremont, with a kin-
dling eye, and a cheek pallid with rage.

'You had better not say that again,' said Lord Mar-
ney, in a tone of menace.

'Why not?' asked Egremont, fiercely. 'Who and
what are you to dare to address me thus?'

' I am your elder brother, sir, whose relationship to
you is your only claim to the consideration of society.'

'A curse on the society that has fashioned such
claims,' said Egremont, in a heightened tone: 'claims
founded in selfishness, cruelty, and fraud, and leading
to demorahsation, misery, and crime.'

'Claims which 1 will make you respect, at least in
this house, sir,' said Lord Marney, springing from his
chair.

'Touch me at your peril!' exclaimed Egremont,
'and I will forget you are my mother's son, and
cleave you to the ground. You have been the blight
of my life; you stole from me my bride, and now
you would rob me of my honour.'

120 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

*Liar and villain!' exclaimed Lord Marney, darting
forward; but at this moment his wife rushed into the
apartment, and clung to him. 'For Heaven's sake,' she
exclaimed, 'what is all this? George, Charles, dearest
George ! '

'Let me go, Arabella.'

'Let him come on.'

But Lady Marney gave a piercing shriek, and held
out her arms to keep the brothers apart. A sound
was heard at the other door; there was nothing in
the world that Lord Marney dreaded so much as that
his servants should witness a domestic scene. He
sprang forward to the door, to prevent any one en-
tering; partially opening it, he said Lady Marney was
unwell and desired her maid; returning, he found
Arabella insensible on the floor, and Egremont van-
ished!

CHAPTER XXV.

The Tommy-Shop.

T WAS a wet morning; there had
been a heavy rain since dawn,
v/hich, impelled by a gusty south-
wester, came driving on a crowd
of women and girls who were as-
sembled before the door of a still
closed shop. Some protected themselves with umbrellas;
some sought shelter beneath a row of old elms that
grew alongside the canal that fronted the house.
Notwithstanding the weather, the clack of tongues
was incessant.

'I thought I saw the wicket of the yard gates
open,' said a woman.

*So did I,' said her neighbour, 'but it was shut
again immediately.'

'It was only Master Joseph,' said a third. *He
likes to see us getting wet through.'

Mf they would only let us into the yard, and get
under one of the workshop sheds, as they do at
Simmon's,' said another.

'You may well say Simmon's, Mrs. Page; I only
wish my master served in his field.'

' 1 have been here since half-past four, Mrs. Grigsby,
with this chilt at my breast all the time. It's three

(221)

222 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

miles for me here, and the same back, and unless I
get the first turn, how are my poor boys to find their
dinner ready when they come out of the pit?'

'A very true word, Mrs. Page; and by this token,
that last Thursday I was here by half-past eleven,
certainly afore noon, having only called at my mother-
in-law's in the way, and it was eight o'clock before
I got home. Ah! it's cruel work, is the tommy-
shop.'

'How d'ye do, neighbour Prance?' said a comely
dame, with a large white basket. ' And how's your
good man ? They was saying at Belfy's he had
changed his service. I hear there's a new butty in
Mr. Parker's field, but the old doggy kept on; so I
always thought; he was always a favourite, and they
do say measured the stints very fair. And what do
you hear bacon is in town? They do tell me only
sixpence, and real home-cured. 1 wonder Diggs has
the face to be selling still at ninepence, and so very
green! I think I see Dame Toddles; how wonderful
she do wear! What are you doing here, little dear;
very young to fetch tommy; keeping place for
mother, eh! that's a good girl; she'd do well to be
here soon, for I think the strike's on eight. Diggs is
sticking it on yellow soap very terrible. What do
you think — Ah! the doors are going to open. No —
a false alarm.'

* How fare you, neighbour?' said a pale young
woman, carrying an infant, to the comely dame.
'Here's an awful crowd, surely. The women will be
fighting and tearing to get in, I guess. I be much
afeard.'

'Well, "first come, first served," all the world
over,' said the comely dame. 'And you must put a

SYBIL

223

good heart on the business, and tie your bonnet. I
dare guess there are not much less than two hundred
here. It's grand tommy-day, you know. And for
my part, I don't care so much for a good squeedge;
one sees so many faces one knows.'

'The cheese here at sixpence is pretty tidy/ said
a crone to her companion; * but you may get as good
in town for fourpence.'

'What I complaia is the weights,' rephed her
companion. * I weighed my pound of butter bought
last tommy-day and it was two penny pieces too
hght. Indeed! I have been, in my time, to all the
shops about here, for the lads or their father, but
never knew tommy so bad as this. I have two
children at home ill from their flour; I have been
very poorly myself; one is used to a little white clay,
but when they lay it on thick, it's very grave.'

'Are your girls in the pit?'

'No; we strive to keep them out, and my man
has gone scores of days on bread and water for that
purpose; and if we were not forced to take so much
tommy, one might manage; but tommy will beat any-
thing. Health first, and honesty afterwards, that's
my say.'

'Well, for my part,' said the crone, 'meat's my
grievance: all the best bits go to the butties, and the
pieces with bone in are chopped off for the colliers'
wives.'

'Dame, when will the door open?' asked a little
pale-faced boy. ' I have been here all this morn, and
never broke my fast.'

'And what do you want, chilt?'

'I want a loaf for mother; but I don't feel I shall
ever get home again, I'm all in a way so dizzy.'

224 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Liza Gray,' said a woman with black beady eyes,
and a red nose, speaking in a sharp voice, and rush-
ing up to a pretty slatternly woman in a straw bon-
net, with a dirty fine ribbon, and a babe at her
breast; *you know the person I'm looking for.'

'Well, Mrs. Mulhns, and how do you do?' she
repHed, in a sweet sawney tone.

'How do you do, indeed! How are people to do
in these bad times ?'

'They is indeed hard, Mrs. Mullins. If you could
see my tommy-book! How I wish I knew figures!
Made up as of last Thursday night by that little divil,
Master Joe Diggs. He has stuck it in here, and stuck
it in there, till it makes one all of a maze. I'm sure
I never had the things; and my man is out of all pa-
tience, and says I can no more keep house than a
natural born.'

'My man is a-wanting to see your man,' said Mrs.
Mullins, with a flashing eye: 'and you know what
about.'

'And very natural, too,' said Liza Gray; 'but how
are we to pay the money we owe him with such a
tommy-book as this, good neighbour MulHns?'

'We're as poor as our neighbours, Mrs. Gray; and
if we are not paid, we must borrow. It's a scarlet
shame to go to the spout because money lent to a
friend is not to be found. You had it in your need,
Liza Gray, and we want it in our need: and have it
I will, Liza Gray.'

'Hush, hush!' said Liza Gray; 'don't wake the
little 'un, for she is very fretful.'

'I will have the five shillings, or I will have as
good,' said Mrs. MulHns.

'Hush, hush, neighbour; now, I'll tell you — you

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225

shall have it; but yet a little time. This is great
tommy-day, and settles our reckoning for five weeks;
but my man may have a draw after to-morrow, and
he shall draw five shillings, and give you half.'

*And the other half.?' said Mrs. Mullins.

'Ah! the other half,' said Liza Gray with a sigh.
'Well, then, we shall have a death in our family
soon: this poor babe can't struggle on much longer.
It belongs to two burial clubs: that will be three
pounds from each, and after the drink and the funeral,
there will be enough to pay all our debts and put us
all square.'

The door of Mr. Diggs' tommy-shop opened. The
rush was like the advance into the pit of a theatre
when the drama existed; pushing, squeezing, fighting,
tearing, shrieking. On a high seat, guarded by rails
from all contact, sat Mr. Diggs, senior, with a bland
smile on his sanctified countenance, a pen behind his
ear, and recommending his constrained customers in
honeyed tones to be patient and orderly. Behind the
substantial counter, which was an impregnable forti-
fication, was his popular son. Master Joseph; a short,
ill-favoured cur, with a spirit of vulgar oppression
and mahcious mischief stamped on his visage. His
black, greasy lank hair, his pug nose, his coarse red
face, and his projecting tusks, contrasted with the
mild and lengthened countenance of his father, who
looked very much like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

For the first five minutes Master Joseph Diggs did
nothing but blaspheme and swear at his customers,
occasionally leaning over the counter and cuffing the
women in the van or lugging some girl by the hair.

*I was first. Master Joseph,' said a woman,
eagerly.

14 B. D.— 15

226 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

*No; I was/ said another.

*I was here,' said the first, *as the clock struck
four, and seated myself on the steps, because I must
be home early; my husband is hurt in the knee.'

*If you were first, you shall be helped last,' said
Master Joseph, *to reward you for your pains;' and
he began taking the orders of the other women.

'Oh! Lord have mercy on me!' said the disap-
pointed woman; 'and I got up in the middle of the
night for this!'

'More fool you! And what you came for I am
sure I don't know,' said Master Joseph; 'for you have
a pretty long figure against you, I can tell you that.'

'1 declare most solemnly — ' said the woman.

'Don't make a brawling here/ said Master Joseph,
'or I'll jump over this here counter and knock you
down, Hke nothink. What did you say, woman? are
you deaf? what did you say? how much best tea do
you want?*

'I don't want any, sir.'

'You never want best tea; you must take three
ounces of best tea, or you shan't have nothing. If
you say another word, I'll put you down four. You
tall gal, what's your name, you keep back there, or
I'll fetch you such a cut as'll keep you at home till
next reckoning. Cuss you, you old fool, do you think
I am to be kept all day while you are mumbling
here ? Who's pushing on there ? I see you, Mrs. Page.
Won't there be a black mark against you! Oh! it's
Mrs. Prance, is it ? Father, put down Mrs. Prance for
a peck of flour. I'll have order here. You think the
last bacon a little too fat: oh! you do, ma'am, do you?
ril take care you shan't complain in future; I likes to
please my customers. There's a very nice flitch hang-

SYBIL

227

ing up in the engine-room; the men wanted some rust
for the machinery; you shall have a slice of that; and
we'll say tenpence a pound, high-dried, and wery lean;
will that satisfy you?

* Order there, order; you cussed women, order, or
ril be among you. And if I just do jump over this
here counter, won't I let fly right and left! Speak
out, you idiot! do you think I can hear your mutter-
ing in this Babel? Cuss them; I'll keep them quiet:'
and so he took up a yard measure, and, leaning over
the counter hit right and left.

'Oh! you little monster!' exclaimed a woman, 'you
have put aut my babby's eye.'

There was a murmur; almost a groan. 'Whose
babby's hurt?' asked Master Joseph, in a softened tone.

'Mine, sir,' said an indignant voice; 'Mary Church.'

'Oh! Mary Church, is it!' said the malicious imp;
'then I'll put Mary Church down for half a pound of
best arrowroot; that's the finest thing in the world
for babbies, and will cure you of bringing your cussed
monkeys here, as if you all thought our shop was an
hinfant school.

'Where's your book, Susan Travers? Left at home!
Then you may go and fetch it. No books, no tom-
my. You are Jones's wife, are you ? Ticket for three
and sixpence out of eighteen shillings wages. Is this
the only ticket you have brought? There's your
money; and you may tell your husband he need not
take his coat off again to go down our shaft. He
must think us cussed fools! Tell him I hope he has
got plenty of money to travel into Wales, for he
won't have no work in England again, or my name
ayn't Diggs. Who's pushing there? I'll be among
you; I'll close the shop. If I do get hold of some of

228 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

you cussed women, you shan't forget it. If anybody
will tell me who is pushing there, they shall have
their bacon for sevenpence. Will nobody have bacon
for sevenpence ? Leagued together, eh ? Then every-
body shall have their bacon for tenpence. Two can
play at that. Push again, and I'll be among you,'
said the infuriated little tyrant. But the waving of the
multitude, impatient, and annoyed by the weather,
was not to be stilled; the movement could not be
regulated; the shop was in commotion; and Master
Joseph Diggs, losing all patience, jumped on the coun-
ter, and amid the shrieks of the women, sprang into
the crowd. Two women fainted; others cried for
their bonnets; others bemoaned their aprons; nothing,
however, deterred Diggs, who kicked and cuffed and
cursed in every quarter, and gave none. At last there
was a general scream of horror, and a cry of 'a boy
killed!'

The senior Diggs, who from his eminence had
hitherto viewed the scene with unruffled complacency;
who in fact, derived from these not unusual ex-
hibitions the same agreeable excitement which a
Roman emperor might have received from the com-
bats of the circus, began to think that affairs were
growing serious, and rose to counsel order and en-
force amiable dispositions. Even Master Joseph was
quelled by that mild voice, which would have become
Augustus. It appeared to be quite true that a boy
was dead. It was the little boy who, sent to get a
loaf for his mother, had complained before the shop
was opened of his fainting energies. He had fallen
in the fray, and it was thought, to use the phrase of
the comely dame who tried to rescue him, 'that he
was quite smothered.'

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229

They carried him out of the shop; the perspiration
poured ofT him; he had no pulse. He had no friends
there. M'll stand by the body,' said the comely dame,
'though I lose my turn.'

At this moment, Stephen Morley, for the reader
has doubtless discovered that the stranger who held
colloquy with the colliers was the friend of Walter
Gerard, arrived at the tommy-shop, which was about
half-way between the house where he had passed the
night and Wodgate. He stopped, inquired, and being
a man of science and some skill, decided, after ex-
amining the poor boy, that life was not extinct.
Taking the elder Diggs aside, he said, * I am the
editor of the Mowbray Phalanx; I will not speak to
you before these people; but I tell you fairly you and
your son have been represented to me as oppressors
of the people. Will it be my lot to report this death
and comment on it ? I trust not. There is yet time
and hope.'

'What is to be done, sir?' inquired the alarmed
Mr. Diggs; *a fellow-creature in this condition — '

'Don't talk, but act/ said Morley. 'There is no
time to be lost. The boy must be taken upstairs and
put to bed; a warm bed, in one of your best rooms,
with every comfort. I am pressed for business, but I
will wait and watch over him till the crisis is passed.
Come, let you and I take him in our arms, and
carry him upstairs through your private door. Every
minute is precious.' And so saying, Morley and the
elder Diggs entered the house.

CHAPTER XXVI.

WODGATE.

ODGATE, or Wogate, as it was
called on the map, was a district
that in old days had been conse-
crated to Woden, and which ap-
peared destined through successive
ages to retain its heathen character.
At the beginning of the revolutionary war, Wodgate
was a sort of squatting district of the great mining
region to which it was contiguous, a place where ad-
venturers in the industry which was rapidly developing
settled themselves; for though the great veins of coal
and ironstone cropped up, as they phrase it, before
they reached this bare and barren land, and it was thus
deficient in those mineral and metallic treasures which
had enriched its neighbourhood, Wodgate had ad-
vantages of its own, and of a kind which touch the
fancy of the lawless. It was land without an owner;
no one claimed any manorial right over it; they could
build cottages without paying rent. It was a district
recognised by no parish; so there were no tithes, and
no meddlesome supervision. It abounded in fuel which
cost nothing, for though the veins were not worth
working as a source of mining profit, the soil of
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SYBIL

231

Wodgate was similar in its superficial character to
that of the country around. So a population gathered,
and rapidly increased, in the ugliest spot in England,
to which neither Nature nor art had contributed a
single charm; where a tree could not be seen, a
flower was unknown, where there was neither belfry
nor steeple, nor a single sight or sound that could
soften the heart or humanise the mind.

Whatever mav have been the cause, whether, as
not unlikely, the original squatters brought with them
some traditionary skill, or whether their isolated and
unchequered existence concentrated their energies on
their craft, the fact is certain, that the inhabitants of
Wodgate early acquired a celebrity as skilful work-
men. This reputation so much increased, and in time
spread so far, that, for more than a quarter of a
century, both in their skill and the economy of their
labour, they have been unmatched throughout the
country. As manufacturers of ironmongery, they
carry the palm from the whole district; as founders
of brass and workers of steel, they fear none; while,
as nailers and locksmiths, their fame has spread even
to the European markets, whither their most skilful
workmen have frequently been invited.

Invited in vain! No wages can tempt the Wod-
gate man from his native home, that squatters' seat
which soon assumed the form of a large village, and
then in turn soon expanded into a town, and at the
present moment numbers its population by swarming
thousands, lodged in the most miserable tenements in
the most hideous burgh in the ugliest country in the
world.

But it has its enduring spell. Notwithstanding the
spread of its civic prosperity, it has lost none of the

232 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

characteristics of its original society; on the contrary,
it has zealously preserved them. There are no land-
lords, head-lessees, main-masters, or butties in Wod-
gate. No church there has yet raised its spire; and,
as if the jealous spirit of Woden still haunted his
ancient temple, even the conventicle scarcely dares
show its humble front in some obscure corner. There
is no municipahty, no magistrate; there are no local
acts, no vestries, no schools of any kind. The
streets are never cleaned; every man lights his own
house; nor does any one know anything except his
business.

More than this, at Wodgate a factory or large es-
tablishment of any kind is unknown. Here labour
reigns supreme. Its division indeed is favoured by
their manners, but the interference or influence of
mere capital is instantly resisted. The business of
Wodgate is carried on by master workmen in their
own houses, each of whom possesses an unlimited
number of what they call apprentices, by whom their
affairs are principally conducted, and whom they treat
as the Mamlouks treated the Egyptians.

These master workmen indeed form a powerful
aristocracy, nor is it possible to conceive one appar-
ently more oppressive. They are ruthless tyrants;
they habitually inflict upon their subjects punishments
more grievous than the slave population of our col-
onies were ever visited with; not content with beat-
ing them with sticks or flogging them with knotted
ropes, they are in the habit of felling them with
hammers, or cutting their heads open with a file or
lock. The most usual punishment, however, or rather
stimulus to increase exertion, is to pull an apprentice's
ears till they run with blood. These youths, too, are

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233

worked for sixteen and even twenty hours a day;
they are often sold by one master to another; they
are fed on carrion, and they sleep in lofts or cellars:
yet, whether it be that they are hardened by brutal-
ity, and really unconscious of their degradation and
unusual sufferings, or whether they are supported by
the belief that their day to be masters and oppressors
will surely arrive, the aristocracy of Wodgate is by
no means so unpopular as the aristocracy of most
other places.

In the first place, it is a real aristocracy; it is
privileged, but it does something for its privileges.
It is distinguished from the main body not merely by
name. It is the most knowing class at Wodgate; it
possesses indeed in its way complete knowledge; and
it imparts in its manner a certain quantity of it to
those whom it guides. Thus it is an aristocracy that
leads, and therefore a fact. Moreover, the social
system of Wodgate is not an unvarying course of in-
finite toil. Their plan is to work hard, but not al-
ways. They seldom exceed four days of labour in
the week. On Sunday the masters begin to drink;
for the apprentices there is dog-fighting without any
stint. On Monday and Tuesday the whole population
of Wodgate is drunk; of all stations, ages, and sexes;
even babes who should be at the breast; for they are
drammed with Godfrey's Cordial. Here is relaxation,
excitement; if less vice otherwise than might be at
first anticipated, we must remember that excesses are
checked by poverty of blood and constant exhaustion.
Scanty food and hard labour are in their way, if not
exactly moralists, a tolerably good police.

There are no others at Wodgate to preach or to
control. It is not that the people are immoral, for

234 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

immorality implies some forethought; or ignorant, for
ignorance is relative; but they are animals; uncon-
scious; their minds a blank; and their worst actions
only the impulse of a gross or savage instinct. There
are many in this town who are ignorant of their very
names; very few who can spell them. It is rare that
you meet with a young person who knows his own
age; rarer to find the boy who has seen a book, or
the girl who has seen a flower. Ask them the name
of their sovereign, and they will give you an unmean-
ing stare; ask them the name of their religion, and
they will laugh: who rules them on earth, or who
can save them in heaven, are alike mysteries to them.

Such was the population with whom Morley was
about to mingle. Wodgate had the appearance of a
vast squalid suburb. As you advanced, leaving be-
hind you long lines of little dingy tenements, with
infants lying about the road, you expected every mo-
ment to emerge into some streets, and encounter
buildings bearing some correspondence, in their size
and comfort, to the considerable population swarming
and busied around you. Nothing of the kind. There
were no public buildings of any sort; no churches,
chapels, town-hall, institute, theatre; and the principal
streets in the heart of the town in which were situate
the coarse and grimy shops, though formed by houses
of a greater elevation than the preceding, were equally
narrow, and if possible more dirty. At every fourth
or fifth house, alleys seldom above a yard wide, and
streaming with filth, opened out of the street. These
were crowded with dwellings of various size, while
from the principal court often branched out a number
of smaller alleys, or rather narrow passages, than
which nothing can be conceived more close and

SYBIL

235

squalid and obscure. Here, during the days of busi-
ness, the sound of the hammer and the file never
ceased, amid gutters of abomination, and piles of foul-
ness, and stagnant pools of filth; reservoirs of leprosy
and plague, whose exhalations were sufficient to taint
the atmosphere of the whole kingdom, and fill the
country with fever and pestilence.

A lank and haggard youth, rickety, smoke-dried,
and black with his craft, was sitting on the threshold
of a miserable hovel, and working at the file. Be-
hind him stood a stunted and meagre girl, with a
back like a grasshopper; a deformity occasioned by
the displacement of the bladebone, and prevalent
among the girls of Wodgate from the cramping pos-
ture of their usual toil. Her long melancholy visage
and vacant stare at Morley, as he passed, attracted
his notice, and it occurring to him that the opportu-
nity was convenient to inquire something of the in-
dividual of whom he was in search, he stopped and
addressed the workman.

'Do you happen to know, friend, a person here
or hereabouts by name Hatton ? '

'Hatton!' said the youth, looking up with a grin,
yet still continuing his labour, M should think I did!'

*Well, thafs fortunate; you can tell me something
about him ? '

*Do you see this here?' said the youth, still grin-
ning, and, letting the file drop from his distorted and
knotty hand, he pointed to a deep scar that crossed
his forehead: 'he did that.'

'An accident?'

'Very like. An accident that often happened. I
should like to have a crown for every time he has
cut my head open. He cut it open once with a key.

236 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

and twice with a lock; he knocked the corner of a
lock into my head twice, once with a bolt, and once
with a shut; you know what that is; the thing what
runs into the staple. He hit me on the head with a
hammer once. That was a blow! I fell away that
time. When I came to, master had stopped the
blood with some fur off his hat. I had to go on
with my work immediately; master said I should do
my stint if I worked till twelve o'clock at night.
Many's the ash stick he has broken on my body;
sometimes the weals remained on me for a week; he
cut my eyehd open once with a nutstick; cut a reg-
ular hole in it, and it bled all over the files I was
working at. He has pulled my ears sometimes that
I thought they must come off in his hand. But all
this was a mere nothin' tb this here cut; that was
serous; and if I hadn't got thro' that, they do say
there must have been a crowner's quest; though I
think that gammon, for old Tugsford did for one
of his prentices, and the body was never found.
And now you ask me if I know Hatton? I should
think 1 did!' And the lank, haggard youth laughed
merrily, as if he had been recounting a series of the
happiest adventures.

* But is there no redress for such iniquitous op-
pression?' said Morley, who had listened with aston-
ishment to this complacent statement. 'Is there no
magistrate to apply to?'

*No, no,' said the filer, with an air of obvious
pride; 'we don't have no magistrates at Wodgate.
We've got a constable, and there was a prentice,
who, coz his master laid it on only with a seat rod,
went over to Ramborough and got a warrant. He
fetched the summons himself, and giv it to the con-

SYBIL

237

stable, but he never served it. That's why they has
a constable here.'

*I am sorry,' said Morley, 'that I have affairs with
such a wretch as this Hatton.'

'You'll find him a wery hearty sort of man,' said
the filer, ' if he don't hap to be in drink. He's a ht-
tle robustious then, but take him all in all for a mas-
ter, you may go further and fare worse.'

'What! this monster!'

'Lord bless you! it's his way, that's all; we be a
queer set here; but he has his pints. Give him a
lock to make, and you won't have your box picked;
he's wery lib'ral too in the wittals. Never had horse-
flesh the whole time I was with him; they has
nothin' else at Tugsford's; never had no sick cow
except when meat was very dear. He always put
his face agin still-born calves; he used to say he
liked his boys to have meat that was born alive,
and killed alive. By which token there never was
any sheep which had bust in the head sold in our
court. And then sometimes he would give us a treat
of fish, when it had been four or five days in town,
and not sold. No, give the devil his due, say I.
There never was no want for anything at meals with
the Bishop, except time to eat them in.'

*And why do you call him the Bishop?'

'That's his name and authority; for he's the gov-
ernor here over all of us. And it has always been so
that Wodgate has been governed by a bishop; be-
cause, as we have no church, we will have as good.
And by this token that this day se'nnight, the day
my time was up, he married me to this here young
lady. She is of the Baptist school religion, and
wanted us to be tied by her clergyman, but all the

238 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

lads that served their time with me were married by
the Bishop, and many a more, and I saw no call to
do no otherwise. So he sprinkled salt over a grid-
iron, read ''Our Father" backwards, and wrote our
name in a book: and we were spliced; but I didn't
do it rashly, did I, Suky, by the token that we had
kept company for two years, and there isn't a gal in
all Wodgate what handles a file like Sue.'

'And what is your name, my good fellow?'

' They call me Tummas, but I ayn't got no second
name; but now I am married I mean to take my
wife's, for she has been baptised, and so has got
two.'

'Yes, sir,' said the girl with the vacant face and
the back like a grasshopper; 'I be a reg'lar born
Christian and my mother afore me, and that's what
few gals in the Yard can say. Thomas will take to
it himself when work is slack; and he believes now
in our Lord and Saviour Pontius Pilate, who was cru-
cified to save our sins; and in Moses, Goliath, and
the rest of the Apostles.'

'Ah! me,' thought Morley, 'and could not they
spare one missionary from Tahiti for their fellow coun-
trymen at Wodgate!'

CHAPTER XXVII.

Gerard's New Neighbour.

HE summer twilight had faded into
sweet night; the young and star-
attended moon glittered like a
sickle in the deep purple sky; of
all the luminous host Hesperus
alone was visible; and a breeze,
that bore the last embrace of the flowers by the
sun, moved languidly and fitfully over the still and
odorous earth.

The moonbeam fell upon the roof and garden of
Gerard. It suffused the cottage with its brilliant light,
except where the dark depth of the embowered porch
defied its entry. All around the beds of flowers and
herbs spread sparkling and defined. You could trace
the minutest walk; almost distinguish every leaf.
Now and then there came a breath, and the sweet-
peas murmured in their sleep; or the roses rustled,
as if they were afraid they were about to be roused
from their lightsome dreams. Farther on the fruit
trees caught the splendour of the night; and looked
like a troop of sultanas taking their garden air, when
the eye of man could not profane them, and laden
with jewels. There were apples that rivalled rubies;

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BENJAMIN DISRAELI

pears of topaz tint; a whole paraphernalia of plums,
some purple as the amethyst, others blue and brilliant
as the sapphire; an emerald here, and now a golden
drop that gleamed like the yellow diamond of Gengis
Khan.

Within, was the scene less fair? A single lamp
shed over the chamber a soft and sufficient light.
The library of Stephen Morley had been removed, but
the place of his volumes had been partly supplied, for
the shelves were far from being empty. Their con-
tents were of no ordinary character: many volumes of
devotion, some of Church history, one or two on ec-
clesiastical art, several works of our elder dramatists,
some good reprints of our chronicles, and many folios
of Church music, which last indeed amounted to a re-
markable collection. There was no musical instrument
of any kind, however, in the room, and the only
change in its furniture, since we last visited the room
of Gerard, was the presence of a long-backed chair of
antique form, beautifully embroidered, and a portrait
of a female saint over the mantel-piece. As for Gerard
himself, he sat with his head leaning on his arm,
which rested on the table, while he listened with
great interest to a book which was read to him by
his daughter, at whose feet lay the fiery and faithful
bloodhound.

*So you see, my father,' said Sybil with anima-
tion, and dropping her book, which, however, her
hand did not relinquish, 'even then all was not lost.
The stout earl retired beyond the Trent, and years
and reigns elapsed before this part of the island ac-
cepted their laws and customs.'

'I see,' said her father, 'and yet I cannot help
wishing that Harold ' Here the hound, hearing

SYBIL

24 £

his name, suddenly rose and looked at Gerard, who,
smiling, patted him and said, 'We were not talking
of thee, good sir, but of thy great namesake; but
ne'er mind, a live dog they say is worth a dead
king.'

'Ah! why have we not such a man now,' said
Sybil, 'to protect the people? Were I a prince I know
no career that 1 should deem so great.'

'But Stephen says no,' said Gerard: 'he says that
these great rnen have never made use of us but as
tools; and that the people never can have their rights
until they produce competent champions from their
own order.'

'But then Stephen does not want to recall the
past,' said Sybil with a kind of sigh; 'he wishes to
create the future.'

'The past is a dream,' said Gerard.

'And what is the future?' inquired Sybil.

'Alack! I know not; but I often wish the battle
of Hastings were to be fought over again, and I was
going to have a hand in it.'

'Ah! my father,' said Sybil with a mournful smile,
'there is ever your fatal specific of physical force.
Even Stephen is against physical force, with all his
odd fancies.'

'All very true,' said Gerard, smihng with good
nature; 'but all the same when I was coming home
a few days ago, and stopped awhile on the bridge
and chanced to see myself in the stream, I could not
help fancying that my Maker had fashioned these
limbs rather to hold a lance or draw a bow than to
supervise a shuttle or a spindle.'

'Yet with the shuttle and the spindle we may re-
deem our race,' said Sybil with animation, 'if we

14 B. D.— 16

242 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

could only form the minds that move those peaceful
weapons. Oh! my father, I will believe that moral
power is irresistible, or where are we to look for
hope?'

Gerard shook his head with his habitual sweet
good-tempered smile. 'Ah!' said he, 'what can we
do ? They have got the land, and the land governs the
people. The Norman knew that, Sybil, as you just
read. If indeed we had our rights, one might do
something; but 1 don't know; I dare say if I had our
land again, I should be as bad as the rest.'

'Oh! no, my father,' exclaimed Sybil with energy,
'never, never! Your thoughts would be as princely
as your lot. What a leader of the people you would
make! '

Harold sprang up suddenly and growled.

'Hush!' said Gerard; 'some one knocks:' and he
rose and left the room. Sybil heard voices and
broken sentences: 'You'll excuse me:' 'I take it
kindly:' 'So we are neighbours.' And then her
father returned, ushering in a person, and saying,
' Here is my friend Mr. Franklin, that I was speaking
of, Sybil, who is going to be our neighbour; down,
Harold, down!' and he presented to his daughter the
companion of Mr. St. Lys in that visit to the hand-
loom weaver when she had herself met the vicar of
Mowbray.

Sybil rose, and letting her book drop gently on
the table, received Egremont with composure and
native grace. It is civilisation that makes us awk-
ward, for it gives us an uncertain position. Perplexed,
we take refuge in pretence; and embarrassed, we
seek a resource in affectation. The Bedouin and the
red Indian never lose their presence of mind; and

SYBIL

243

the wife of a peasant, when you enter her cottage,
often greets you with a propriety of mien which fa-
vourably contrasts with your reception by some grand
dame in some grand assembly, meeting her guests
alternately with a caricature of courtesy or an exag-
geration of supercilious self-control.

'I dare say,' said Egremont, bowing to Sybil,
*you have seen our poor friend the weaver since we
met there.'

'The day I quitted Mowbray,' said Sybil. 'They
are not without friends.'

'Ah! you have met my daughter before.'

'On a mission of grace,' said Egremont.

'And I suppose you found the town not very
pleasant, Mr. Franklin,' returned Gerard.

'No; 1 could not stand it, the nights were so
close. Besides, I have a great accumulation of notes,
and I fancied I could reduce them into a report more
efficiently in comparative seclusion. So I have got a
room near here, with a little garden, not so pretty as
yours; but still a garden is something; and if I want
any additional information, why, after all, Mowbray
is only a walk.'

'You say well, and have done wisely. Besides,
you have such late hours in London, and hard work.
Some country air will do you all the good in the
world. That gallery must be tiresome. Do you use
shorthand ? '

'A sort of shorthand of my own,' said Egremont.
'I trust a good deal to my memory.'

'Ah! you are young. My daughter also has a
wonderful memory. For my own part, there are many
things which I am not sorry to forget.'

'You see I took you at your word, neighbour,'

244 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

said Egremont. ' When one has been at work the
whole day one feels a little lonely towards night.'

'Very true; and I dare say you find desk work
sometimes dull; I never could make anything of it my-
self. I can manage a book well enough, if it be well
written, and on points 1 care for; but I would sooner
listen than read any time,' said Gerard. 'Indeed, I
should be right glad to see the minstrel and the story-
teller going their rounds again. It would be easy after
a day's work, when one has not, as I have now, a
good child to read to me.'

'This volume?' said Egremont, drawing his chair
to the table, and looking at Sybil, who intimated as-
sent by a nod.

'Ah! it's a fine book,' said Gerard, 'though on a
sad subject.*

'The History of the Conquest of England by the
Normans,' said Egremont, reading the title page, on
which also was written, ' Ursula Trafiford to Sybil
Gerard.'

'You know it?' said Sybil.

'Only by fame.'

' Perhaps the subject may not interest you so much
as it does us,' said Sybil.

'It must interest all, and all alike,' said her father;
'for we are divided between the conquerors and the
conquered.'

'But do not you think,' said Egremont, 'that such
a distinction has long ceased to exist ? '

' In what degree ? ' asked Gerard. ' Many circum-
stances of oppression have doubtless gradually disap-
peared; but that has arisen from the change of manners,
not from any political recognition of their injus-
tice. The same course of time which has removed

SYBIL

245

many enormities, more shocking, however, to our
modern feelings than to those who devised and en-
dured them, has simultaneously removed many alle-
viating circumstances. If the mere baron's grasp be
not so ruthless, the champion we found in the Church
is no longer so ready. The spirit of conquest has
adapted itself to the changing circumstances of ages,
and, however its results vary in form, in degree they
are much the same.'

'But how do they show themselves?'

'In many circumstances, which concern many
classes; but I speak of those which touch my own
order; and therefore I say at once, in the degradation
of the people.'

*But are the people so degraded?'

'There is more serfdom in England now than at
any time since the Conquest. 1 speak of what passes
under my eyes daily when I say that those who
labour can as little choose or change their masters
now as when they were born thralls. There are great
bodies of the working classes of this country nearer
the condition of brutes than they have been at any
time since the Conquest. Indeed, I see nothing to
distinguish them from brutes, except that their morals
are inferior. Incest and infanticide are as common
among them as among the lower animals. The do-
mestic principle wanes weaker and weaker every
year in England; nor can we wonder at it, when
there is no comfort to cheer and no sentiment to
hallow the home.'

*I was reading a work the other day,' said Egre-
mont, 'that statistically proved that the general condi-
tion of the people was much better at this moment
than it had been at any known period of history.'

246 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Ah! yes, I know that style of speculation,' said
Gerard; 'your gentleman who reminds you that a
working man now has a pair of cotton stockings, and
that Harry the Eighth himself was not as well off.
At any rate, the condition of classes must be judged
of by the age, and by their relation with each other.
One need not dwell on that. I deny the premises.
I deny that the condition of the main body is better
now than at any other period of our history; that it
is as good as it has been at several. I say, for in-
stance, the people were better clothed, better lodged,
and better fed just before the War of the Roses than
they are at this moment. We know how an English
peasant lived in those times: he ate flesh every day,
he never drank water, was well housed, and clothed
in stout woollens. Nor are the Chronicles necessary
to tell us this. The Acts of Parliament, from the Plan-
tagenets to the Tudors, teach us alike the price of
provisions and the rate of wages; and we see in a
moment that the wages of those days brought as
much sustenance and comfort as a reasonable man
could desire.'

'I know how deeply you feel upon this subject,'
said Egremont, turning to Sybil.

* Indeed it is the only subject that ever engages
my thought,' she replied, 'except one.'

'And that one?'

'Is to see the people once more kneel before our
blessed Lady,' replied Sybil.

'Look at the average term of life,' said Gerard,
coming unintentionally to the relief of Egremont, who
was a little embarrassed. 'The average term of life
in this district among the working classes is seventeen.
What think you of that? Of the infants born in

SYBIL

247

Mowbray, more than a moiety die before the age of
five.'

'And yet,' said Egremont, 'in old days they had
terrible pestilences.'

'But they touched all ahke,' said Gerard. *We
have more pestilence now in England than we ever
had, but it only reaches the poor. You never hear
of it. Why, typhus alone takes every year from the
dwellings of the artisan and peasant a population equal
to that of the whole county of Westmoreland. This
goes on every year, but the representatives of the
conquerors are not touched; it is the descendants of
the conquered alone who are the victims.'

It sometimes seems to me,' said Sybil despond-
ingly, 'that nothing short of the descent of angels
can save the people of this kingdom.'

'I sometimes think I hear a little bird,' said Ger-
ard, 'who sings that the long frost may yet break
up. I have a friend, him of whom I was speaking
to you the other day, who has his remedies.'

'But Stephen Morley does not believe in angels,'
said Sybil with a sigh; 'and I have no faith in his
plan.'

'He believes that God will help those who help
themselves,' said Gerard.

'And I believe,' said Sybil, 'that those only can
help themselves whom God helps.'

All this time Egremont was sitting at the table,
with a book in his hand, gazing fitfully and occa-
sionally with an air of absence on its title page,
whereon was written the name of its owner. Sud-
denly he said 'Sybil.'

'Yes,' said the daughter of Gerard, with an air of
some astonishment.

248 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

M beg your pardon,' said Egremont blushing; M
was reading your name. I thought I was reading it
to myself. Sybil Gerard! What a beautiful name is
Sybil!'

*My mother's name,' said Gerard; *and my gran-
dame's name, and a name, I beheve, that has been
about- our hearth as long as our race; and that's a
very long time indeed,' he added, smiling, 'for we
were tall men in King John's reign, as I have heard
say.'

'Yours is indeed an old family.'

'Ay, we have some English blood in our veins,
though peasants and the sons of peasants. But there
was one of us who drew a bow at Azincourt; and I
have heard greater things, but I believe they are old
wives' tales.'

'At least we have nothing left,' said Sybil, 'but
our old faith; and that we have clung to through
good report and evil report.'

'And now,' said Gerard, 'I rise with the lark,
good neighbour Franklin; but before you go, Sybil
will sing to us a requiem that 1 love: it stills the
spirit before we sink into the slumber which may this
night be death, and which one day must be.'

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A Morning Stroll.

BLOOM was spread over the morn-
ing sky. A soft golden light bathed
with its fresh beam the bosom of
the valley, except where a deli-
cate haze, rather than a mist, still
partially hngered over the river,
which yet occasionally gleamed and sparkled in the
sunshine. A sort of shadowy lustre suffused the
landscape, which, though distinct, was mitigated in
all its features: the distant woods, the clumps of tall
trees that rose about the old grey bridge, the cottage
chimneys that sent their smoke into the blue still air,
amid their clustering orchards and gardens of flowers
and herbs.

Ah! what is there so fresh and joyous as a sum-
mer morn! that spring-time of the day, when the
brain is bright, and the heart is brave; the season of
daring and of hope; the renovating hour!

Forth from his cottage room came the brother of
Lord Marney, to feel the vigorous bliss of life amid
sunshiny gardens and the voices of bees and birds.

'Ah! this is dehcious!' he felt. 'This is existence!
Thank God 1 am here; that I have quitted for ever

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250 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

that formal and heartless Marney. Were it not for
my mother I would remain Mr. Franklin for ever.
Would I were indeed a journalist, provided I always
had a mission to the vale of Mowbray. Or anything, so
that I were ever here. As companions, independently
of everything else, they are superior to any that I
have been used to. Why do these persons interest
me? They feel and they think: two habits that have
quite gone out of fashion, if ever they existed, among
my friends. And that polish of manners, that studied
and factitious refinement, which is to compensate for
the heartlessness or the stupidity we are doomed
to; is my host of last night deficient in that refine-
ment ? If he do want our conventional discipline, he
has a native breeding which far excels it. I observe
no word or action which is not prompted by that
fine feeling which is the sure source of good taste.
This Gerard appears to me a real genuine man; full
of knowledge worked out by his own head; with
large yet wholesome sympathies; and a deuced deal
better educated than Lord de Mowbray or my brother;
and they do occasionally turn over a book, which is
not the habit of our set.

*And his daughter; ay, his daughter! There is
something almost sublime about that young girl, yet
strangely sweet withal; a tone so lofty combined with
such simplicity is very rare. For there is no affec-
tation of enthusiasm about her; nothing exaggerated,
nothing rhapsodical. Her dark eyes and lustrous face,
and the solemn sweetness of her thrilling voice, they
haunt me; they have haunted me from the first mo-
ment I encountered her like a spirit amid the ruins of
our Abbey. And I am one of *'the family of sacri-
lege." If she knew that! And I am one of the con-

SYBIL

251

quering class she denounces. If also she knew that!
Ah! there is much to know! Above all, the future.
Away! the tree of knowledge is the tree of death. I
will have no thought that is not as bright and lovely
as this morn.'

He went forth from his little garden, and strolled
along the road in the direction of the cottage of
Gerard, which was about three quarters of a mile
distant. You might see almost as far; the sunshiny
road a little winding and rising a very slight ascent.
The cottage itself was hid by its trees. While Egre-
mont was still musing of one who lived under that
roof, he beheld in the distance Sybil.

She was springing along with a quick and airy
step. Her black dress displayed her undulating and
elastic figure. Her little foot bounded from the earth
with a merry air. A long rosary hung at her side;
and her head was partly covered with a hood which
descended just over her shoulders. She seemed gay,
for Harold kept running before her with a frolic-
some air, and then, returning to his mistress, danced
about her, and almost overpowered her with his
gambols.

'1 salute thee, holy sister,' said Egremont.

*0h! is not this a merry morn?' she exclaimed,
with a bright and happy face.

* 1 feel it as you. And whither do you go ? '

'1 go to the convent; I pay my first visit to our
Superior since I left them.'

''Not very long ago,' said Egremont, with a smile,
and turning with her.

*It seems so,' said Sybil.

They walked on together; Sybil, glad as the hour,
noticing a thousand cheerful sights, speaking to her

2 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

dog in her ringing voice, as he gambolled before
them, or seized her garments in his mouth, and ever
and anon bounded away and then returned, looking
up in his mistress's face to inquire whether he had
been wanted in his absence.

'What a pity it is that your father's way each
morning lies up the valley,' said Egremont; 'he would
be your companion to Mowbray.'

*Ah! but 1 am so happy that he has not to work
in a town,' said Sybil. 'He is not made to be cooped
up in a hot factory in a smoky street. At least he
labours among the woods and waters. And the
Traffords are such good people! So kind to him and
to all.'

'You love your father very much.'

She looked at him a little surprised; and then her
sweet serious face broke into a smile, and she said,
'And is that strange?'

'I think not,' said Egremont; 'I am inchned to
love him myself.'

'Ah! you win my heart,' said Sybil, 'when you
praise him. I think that is the real reason why I
like Stephen; for otherwise he is always saying some-
thing with which 1 cannot agree, which I disapprove;
and yet he is so good to my father!'

'You speak of Mr. Morley — '

'Oh! we don't call him "Mr.,"' said Sybil, slightly
laughing.

'I mean Stephen Morley,' said Egremont, recalling
his position, 'whom I met in Marney Abbey. He is
very clever, is he not?'

'He is a great writer and a great student; and
what he is he has made himself. I hear, too, that
you follow the same pursuit,' said Sybil.

SYBIL

253

'But I am not a great writer or a great student,'
said Egremont.

'Whatever you be, I trust,' said Sybil, in a more
serious tone, 'that you will never employ the talents
that God has given you against the people.'

'I have come here to learn something of their
condition,' said Egremont. 'That is not to be done
in a great city like London. We all of us live too
much in a circle. You will assist me, I am sure,'
added Egremont; 'your spirit will animate me. You
told me last night that there was no other subject,
except one, which ever occupied your thoughts.'

'Yes,' said Sybil, '1 have lived under two roofs,
only two roofs; and each has given me a great idea;
the convent and the cottage. One has taught me
the degradation of my faith, the other of my race.
You should not wonder, therefore, that my heart is
concentrated on the Church and the people.'

'But there are other ideas,' said Egremont, 'that
might equally be entitled to your thought.'

'I feel these are enough,' said Sybil; 'too great, as
it is, for my brain.'

CHAPTER XXIX.

The Bishop of Wodgate.

T THE end of a court in Wodgate,
of rather larger dimensions than
usual in that town, was a high
and many-windowed house, of
several stories in height, which
had been added to it at intervals. It
was in a most dilapidated state; the principal part
occupied as a nail-workshop, where a great number
of heavy iron machines were working in every room
on each floor; the building itself in so shattered a
condition that every part of it creaked and vibrated
with their motion. The flooring was so broken that
in many places one could look down through the
gaping and rotten planks, while the upper floors
from time to time had been shored up with props.

This was the palace of the Bishop of \Vodgate,
and here, with his arms bare and black, he worked
at those locks which defied any skeleton key that
was not made by himself. He was a short, thickset
man, powerfully made, with brawny arms dispropor-
tionately short even for his height, and with a coun-
tenance, as far as one could judge of a face so
disfigured by grimy toil, rather brutal than savage.
(354)

SYBIL

His choice apprentices, full of admiration and terror,
worked about him; lank and haggard youths, who
never for an instant dared to raise their dingy faces
and lack-lustre eyes from their ceaseless labour. ' On
each side of their master, seated on a stool higher
than the rest, was an urchin of not more than four
or five years of age, serious and demure, and as if
proud of his eminent position, and working inces-
santly at his little file: these were two sons of the
bishop.

'Now, boys,' said the bishop, in a hoarse, harsh
voice, * steady, there; steady. There's a file what
don't sing; can't deceive my ear; I know all their
voices. Don't let me find that 'un out, or I won't
walk into him, won't 1 ? Ayn't you lucky, boys, to
have reg'lar work like this, and the best of prog! It
worn't my lot, I can tell you that. Give me that
shut, you there, Scrubbynose, can't you move? Look
sharp, or 1 won't move you, won't I? Steady, steady!
All right! That's music. Where will you hear music
Hke twenty files all working at once! You ought to
be happy, boys, oughtn't you? Won't there be a
treat of fish after this, that's all! Hulloa, there, you
red-haired varmint, what are you looking after ? Three
boys looking about them; what's all this? won't I
be among you?' and he sprang forward and seized
the luckless ears of the first apprentice he could
get hold of, and wrung them till the blood spouted
forth.

* Please, bishop,' sang out the boy, 'it worn't my
fault. Here's a man what wants you.'

* Who wants me?' said the bishop, looking round,
and he caught the figure of Morley, who had just
entered the shop.

256 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Well, what's your will? Locks or nails?'

'Neither,' said Morley; M wish to see a man
named Hatton.'

'Well, you see a man named Hatton,' said the
bishop; 'and now what do you want of him?'

'I should like to say a word to you alone,' said
Morley.

'Hem! I should like to know who is to finish this
lock, and look after my boys! If it's an order, let's
have it at once.'

*It is not an order,' said Morley.

'Then I don't want to hear nothing about it,'
said the bishop.

'It's about family matters,' said Morley.

'Ah!' said Hatton, eagerly, 'what, do you come
from him ? '

'It may be,' said Morley.

Upon this the bishop, looking up to the ceiling of
the room in which there were several large chinks,
began calling out lustily to some unseen person
above, and immediately was replied to in a shrill
voice of objurgation, demanding in peremptory words,
interlarded with many oaths, what he wanted. His
reply called down his unseen correspondent, who
soon entered his workshop. It was the awful pres-
ence of Mrs. Hatton; a tall bearded virago, with a
file in her hand, for that seemed the distinctive arm
of the house, and eyes flashing with unbridled power.

'Look after the boys,' said Hatton, 'for I have
business.'

' Won't I ? ' said Mrs. Hatton ; and a thrill of terror
pervaded the assembly. All the files moved in regu-
lar melody; no one dared to raise his face; even her
two young children looked still more serious and de-

SYBIL

257

mure. Not that any being present flattered himself
for an instant that the most sedulous attention on his
part could prevent an outbreak; all that each aspired
to, and wildly hoped, was that he might not be the
victim singled out to have his head cut open, or his
eye knocked out, or his ears half pulled off by
the being who v/as the terror not only of the work-
shop, but of Wodgate itself; their bishop's gentle
wife.

In the meantime, that worthy, taking Morley into
a room where there were no machines at work ex-
cept those made of iron, said, ' Well, what have you
brought me ? '

Mn the first place,' said Morley, 'I would speak
to you of your brother.'

'I concluded that,' said Hatton, 'when you spoke
of family matters bringing you here; he is the only
relation I have in this world, and therefore it must
be of him.'

Mt is of him,' said Morley.

'Has he sent anything?'

'Hem!' said Morley, who was by nature a diplo-
matist, and instantly comprehended his position, be-
ing himself pumped when he came to pump; but he
resolved not to precipitate the affair. ' How late is it
since you heard from him ? ' he asked.

'Why, I suppose you know,' said Hatton; 'I
heard as usual.'

' From his usual place ? ' inquired Morley.

'I wish you would tell me where that is,' said
Hatton, eagerly.

'Why, he writes to you?'

'Blank letters; never had a line except once, and
that is more than twelve year ago. He sends me a

14 B. D.— 17

258 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

twenty-pound note every Christmas; and that is all I
know about him.'

'Then he is rich, and well to do in the world?'
said Morley.

* Why, don't you know?' said Hatton; M thought
you came from him!'

'I came about him. I wished to know whether
he were alive, and that you have been able to inform
me: and where he was; and that you have not been
able to inform me.'

*Why, you're a regular muff!' said the bishop.

CHAPTER XXX.

Another View of the People.

FEW days after his morning walk
with Sybil, it was agreed that Egre-
mont should visit Mr. Trafford's
factory, which he had expressed
a great desire to inspect. Gerard
always left his cottage at break of
dawn, and as Sybil had not yet paid her accustomed
visit to her friend and patron, who was the employer
of her father, it was arranged that Egremont should
accompany her at a later and more convenient hour
in the morning, and then that they should all return
together.

The factory was about a mile distant from their
cottage, which belonged indeed to Mr. Trafiford, and
had been built by him. He was the younger son of
a family that had for centuries been planted in the
land, but who, not satisfied with the factitious con-
sideration with which society compensates the junior
members of a territorial house for their entailed pov-
erty, had availed himself of some opportunities that
offered themselves, and had devoted his energies to
those new sources of wealth that were unknown to
his ancestors. His operations at first had been ex-

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26o BENJAMIN DISRAELI

tremely limited, like his fortunes; but with a small
capital, though his profits were not considerable, he
at least gained experience. With gentle blood in his
veins, and old English feelings, he imbibed, at an
early period of his career, a correct conception of the
relations which should subsist between the employer
and the employed. He felt that between them there
should be other ties than the payment and the receipt
of wages.

A distant and childless relative, who made him a
visit, pleased with his energy and enterprise, and
touched by the development of his social views, left
him a considerable sum, at a moment, too, when a
great opening was offered to manufacturing capital
and skill. Trafford, schooled in rigid fortunes, and
formed by struggle, if not by adversity, was ripe for
the occasion, and equal to it. He became very opu-
lent, and he lost no time in carrying into life and
being the plans which he had brooded over in the
years when his good thoughts were limited to dreams.
On the banks of his native Mowe he had built a
factory, which was now one of the marvels of the
district; one might almost say, of the country: a
single room, spreading over nearly two acres, and
holding more than two thousand workpeople. The
roof of groined arches, lighted by ventilating domes
at the height of eighteen feet, was supported by hol-
low cast-iron columns, through which the drainage
of the roof was effected. The height of the ordinary
rooms in which the workpeople in manufactories are
engaged, is not more than from nine to eleven feet;
and these are built in stories, the heat and effluvia of
the lower rooms communicated to those above, and
the difficulty of ventilation insurmountable. At Mr.

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Trafford's, by an ingenious process, not unlike that
which is practised in the House of Commons, the
ventilation was also carried on from below, so that
the whole building was kept at a steady temperature,
and little susceptible to atmospheric influence. The
physical advantages of thus carrying on the whole
work in one chamber are great: in the improved
health of the people, the security against dangerous
accidents to women and youth, and the reduced
fatigue resulting from not having to ascend and de-
scend, and carry materials to the higher rooms. But
the moral advantages resulting from superior inspec-
tion and general observation are not less important:
the child works under the eye of the parent, the
parent under that of the superior workman; the in-
spector or employer at a glance can behold all.

When the workpeople of Mr. Trafford left his
factory they were not forgotten. Deeply had he
pondered on the influence of the employer on the
health and content of his workpeople. He knew well
that the domestic virtues are dependent on the exist-
ence of a home, and one of his first efforts had been
to build a village where every family might be well
lodged. Though he was the principal proprietor, and
proud of that character, he nevertheless encouraged
his workmen to purchase the fee: there were some
who had saved sufficient money to effect this; proud
of their house and their little garden, and of the
horticultural society, where its produce permitted them
to be annual competitors. In every street there was
a well: behind the factory were the public baths; the
schools were under the direction of the perpetual
curate of the church, which Mr. Trafford, though a
Roman Catholic, had raised and endowed. In the

262 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

midst of this village, surrounded by beautiful gardens,
which gave an impulse to the horticulture of the
community, was the house of Trafford himself, who
comprehended his position too well to withdraw him-
self with vulgar exclusiveness from his real dependents,
but recognised the baronial principle, reviving in a
new form, and adapted to the softer manners and
more ingenious circumstances of the times.

And what was the influence of such an employer
and such a system of employment on the morals and
manners of the employed? Great; infinitely beneficial.
The connection of a labourer with his place of work,
whether agricultural or manufacturing, is itself a vast
advantage. Proximity to the employer brings cleanli-
ness and order, because it brings observation and
encouragement. In the settlement of Trafford crime
was positively unknown, and offences were slight.
There was not a single person in the village of a
reprobate character. The men were well clad; the
women had a blooming cheek; drunkenness was un-
known; while the moral condition of the softer sex
was proportionately elevated.

The vast form of the spreading factory, the roofs
and gardens of the village, the Tudor chimneys of the
house of Trafford, the spire of the gothic church, with
the sparkling river and the sylvan background, came
rather suddenly on the sight of Egremont. They were
indeed in the pretty village street before he was aware
he was about to enter it. Some beautiful children
rushed out of a cottage and flew to Sybil, crying
out, 'the queen, the queen;' one clinging to her
dress, another seizing her arm, and a third, too
small to struggle, pouting out its lips to be em-
braced.

SYBIL

263

'My subjects,' said Sybil laughing, as she greeted
them all; and then they ran away to announce to
others that their queen had arrived.

Others came; beautiful and young. As Sybil and
Egremont walked along, the race too tender for la-
bour seemed to spring out of every cottage to greet
their 'queen.' Her visits had been rare of late, but
they were never forgotten ; they formed epochs in the
village annals of the children, some of whom knew
only by tradition the golden age when Sybil Gerard
lived at the great house, and daily glanced like a spirit
among their homes, smiling and met with smiles,
blessing and ever blessed.

*And here,' she said to Egremont, *I must bid you
good-bye; and this little boy,' touching gently on his
head a serious urchin who had never left her side for
a moment, proud of his position, and holding tight
her hand with all his strength, 'this little boy shall
be your guide. It is not a hundred yards. Now,
Pierce, you must take Mr. Franklin to the factory, and
ask for Mr. Gerard.' And she went her way.

They had not separated five minutes, when the
sound of whirling wheels caught the ear of Egremont,
and, looking round, he saw a cavalcade of great pre-
tension rapidly approaching; dames and cavaliers on
horseback; a brilliant equipage, postilions and four
horses; a crowd of grooms. Egremont stood aside.
The horsemen and horsewomen caracoled gaily by
him; proudly swept on the sparkling barouche; the
saucy grooms pranced in his face. Their masters and
mistresses were not strangers to him: he recognised
with some dismay the liveries, and then the arms of
Lord de Mowbray, and caught the cold, proud coun-
tenance of Lady Joan, and the flexible visage of Lady

264 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Maud, both on horseback, and surrounded by admir-
ing cavaliers.

Egremont flattered himself that he had not been
recognised, and, dismissing his little guide, instead
of proceeding to the factory, he sauntered away in
an opposite direction, and made a visit to the Church.

The wife of Trafford embraced Sybil, and then emr
braced her again. She seemed as happy as the chil-
dren of the village, that the joy of her roof, as of so
many others, had returned to them, though only for
a few hours. Her husband, she said, had just quitted
the house; he was obliged to go to the factory to re-
ceive a great and distinguished party who were ex-
pected this morning, having written to him several
days before for permission to view the works. 'We
expect them to lunch here afterwards,' said Mrs.
Trafford, a refined woman, but unused to society,
and who rather trembled at the ceremony; 'Oh! do
stay with me, Sybil, to receive them.'

This intimation so much alarmed Sybil that she
rose as soon as was practicable; and saying that
she had some visits to make in the village, she prom-
ised to return when Mrs. Trafford was less engaged.

An hour elapsed; there was a loud ring at the
hall-door; the great and distinguished party had ar-
rived. Mrs. Trafford prepared for the interview, and
looked a little frightened as the doors opened, and
her husband ushered in and presented to her Lord
and Lady de Mowbray, their daughters. Lady Fire-
brace, Mr. Jermyn, who still lingered at the castle,
and Mr. Alfred Mountchesney and Lord Milford, who
were mere passing guests, on their way to Scotland,
but reconnoitering the heiresses in their course.

Lord de Mowbray was profuse of praise and com-

SYBIL

265

pliments. His lordship was apt to be too civil. The
breed would come out sometimes. To-day he was
quite the coffee-house waiter. He praised everything:
the machinery, the workmen, the cotton manufactured
and the cotton raw, even the smoke. But Mrs. Traf-
ford would not have the smoke defended, and his
lordship gave up the smoke, but only to please her.
As for Lady de Mowbray, she was as usual courteous
and condescending, with a kind of smouldering smile
on her fair aquiline face, that seemed half pleasure and
half surprise at the strange people she was among.
Lady Joan was haughty and scientific, approved of
much, but principally of the system of ventilation, of
which she asked several questions which greatly per-
plexed Mrs. Trafford, who slightly blushed, and looked
at her husband for relief, but he was engaged with
Lady Maud, who was full of enthusiasm, entered into
everything with the zest of sympathy, identified her-
self with the factory system almost as much as she
had done with the Crusades, and longed to teach in
singing schools, found public gardens, and bid foun-
tains flow and sparkle for the people.

'\ think the works were wonderful,' said Lord
Milford, as he was cutting a pasty; 'and indeed, Mrs.
Trafford, everything here is charming; but what I
have most admired at your place, is a young girl we
met; the most beautiful I think I ever saw.'

*With the most beautiful dog,' said Mr. Mount-
chesney.

*0h! that must have been Sybil!' exclaimed Mrs.
Trafford.

'And who is Sybil?* asked Lady Maud. 'That is
one of our family names. We all thought her quite
beautiful.'

266 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'She is a child of the house/ said Mrs. Trafford,
'or rather was, for I am sorry to say she has long
quitted us/

Ms she a nun?' asked Lord Milford, 'for her vest-
ments had a conventual air.'

*She has just left your convent at Mowbray/ said
Mr. Trafford, addressing his answer to Lady Maud,
'and rather against her will. She clings to the dress
she was accustomed to there.'

*And now she resides with you?'

*No; I should be happy if she did. I might al-
most say she was brought up under this roof. She
lives now with her father.'

'And who is so fortunate as to be her father?' in-
quired Mr. Mountchesney.

'Her father is the inspector of my works; the per-
son who accompanied us over them this morning.'

'What! that handsome man 1 so much admired,'
said Lady Maud, 'so very aristocratic-looking. Papa,'
she said, addressing herself to Lord de Mowbray,
'the inspector of Mr. Trafford's works we are speak-
ing of, that aristocratic-looking person that I observed
to you, he is the father of the beautiful girl.'

'He seemed a very intelligent person,' said Lord
de Mowbray, with many smiles.

'Yes,' said Mr. Trafford; 'he has great talents and
great integrity. 1 would trust him with anything and
to any amount. All 1 wish,' he added, with a smile
and in a lower tone to Lady de Mowbray, ' all I wish
is, that he was not quite so fond of politics.'

'Is he very violent?' inquired her ladyship, in a
sugary tone.

'Too violent,* said Mr. Trafford; 'and wild in his
ideas.'

SYBIL

267

*And yet I suppose,' said Lord Milford, 'he must
be very well off. '

* Why, I must say for him it is not selfishness that
makes him a malcontent,' said Mr. Trafford; *he be-
moans the condition of the people.'

'If we are to judge of the condition of the people
by what we see here,' said Lord de Mowbray, 'there
is little to lament in it. But I fear these are instances
not so common as we could wish. You must have
been at a great outlay, Mr. Trafford.?'

'Why,' said Mr. Trafford, 'for my part I have al-
ways considered that there was nothing so expensive
as a vicious population. 1 hope 1 had other objects
in view in what 1 have done than a pecuniary com-
pensation. They say we all have our hobbies; and it
was ever mine to improve the condition of my work-
people, to see what good tenements, and good schools,
and just wages paid in a fair manner, and the en-
couragement of civilising pursuits would do to ele-
vate their character. I should find an ample reward
in the moral tone and material happiness of this com-
munity; but, really, viewing it in a pecuniary point of
view, the investment of capital has been one of the
most profitable I ever made; and I would not, I as-
sure you, for double its amount, exchange my work-
people for the promiscuous assemblage engaged in
other factories.'

' The influence of the atmosphere on the condition of
the labourer is a subject which deserves investigation,'
said Lady Joan to Mr. Jermyn, who stared and bowed.

'And you do not feel alarmed at having a person
of such violent opinions as your inspector at the head
of your estabhshment ?' said Lady Firebrace to Mr.
Trafford, who smiled a negative.

268 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'What is the name of the intelligent individual
who accompanied us?' inquired Lord de Mowbray.

'His name is Gerard,' said Mr. Trafford.

*I believe a common name in these parts,' said
Lord de Mowbray, looking a little confused.

'Not very,' said Mr. Trafford; "tis an old name,
and the stock has spread; but all Gerards claim a
common lineage, 1 believe, and my inspector has
gentle blood, they say, in his veins.'

'He looks as if he had,' said Lady Maud.

'All persons with good names affect good blood,'
said Lord de Mowbray; and then turning to Mrs.
Trafford he overwhelmed her with elaborate courtesies
of praise; praised everything again : first generally and
then in detail; the factory, which he seemed to pre-
fer to his castle; the house, which he seemed to
prefer even to the factory; the gardens, from which
he anticipated even greater gratification than from the
house. And this led to an expression of a hope that
he would visit them. And so in due time the lunch-
eon was achieved. Mrs. Trafford looked at her
guests, there was a rustling and a stir, and every-
body was to go and see the gardens that Lord de
Mowbray had so much praised.

'I am all for looking after the beautiful nun,' said
Mr. Mountchesney to Lord Milford.

'I think 1 shall ask the respectable manufacturer
to introduce me to her,' replied his lordship.

In the meantime Egremont had joined Gerard at
the factory.

'You should have come sooner,' said Gerard, 'and
then you might have gone round with the fine folks.
We have had a grand party here from the castle.'

'So I perceived,' said Egremont, 'and withdrew.'

SYBIL 269

*Ah! they were not in your way, eh?' he said in
a mocking smile. ' Well, they were very condescend-
ing; at least for such great people. An earl! Earl de
Mowbray; I suppose he came over with William the
Conqueror. Mr. Trafford makes a show of the place,
and it amuses their visitors, I dare say, like anything
else that's strange. There were some young gentle-
men with them, who did not seem to know much
about anything. I thought I had a right to be
amused too; and I must say I liked very much to
see one of them looking at the machinery through
his eye-glass. There was one very venturesome chap:
I thought he was going to catch hold of the fly-
wheel, but I gave him a spin which I believe saved
his life, though he did rather stare. He was a lord.'

' They are great heiresses, his daughters, they say
at Mowbray,' said Egremont.

'I dare say,' said Gerard. 'A year ago this earl
had a son, an only son, and then his daughters were
not great heiresses. But the son died, and now it's
their turn. And perhaps some day it will be some-
body else's turn. If you want to understand the ups
and downs of life, there's nothing like the parchments
of an estate. Now master, now man! He who served
in the hall now lords in it; and very often the baseborn
change their liveries for coronets, while gentle blood
has nothing left but — dreams; eh, Master Franklin .^^'

Mt seems you know the history of this Lord de
Mowbray ? '

* Why, a man learns a good many things in his
time; and living in these parts, there are few secrets
of the notables. He has had the title to his broad
acres questioned before this time, my friend.'

Mndeed!'

270 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Yes; I could not help thinking of that to-day,'
said Gerard, ' when he questioned me with his min-
cing voice and pulled the wool with his cursed white
hands and showed it to his dame, who touched it
with her little finger; and his daughters, who tossed
their heads like peahens, Lady Joan and Lady Maud.
Lady Joan and Lady Maud!' repeated Gerard in a
voice of bitter sarcasm. 'I did not care for the rest;
but I could not stand that Lady Joan and that Lady
Maud. I wonder if my Sybil saw them.'

In the meantime, Sybil had been sent for by Mrs.
Trafford. She had inferred from the message that the
guests had departed, and her animated cheek showed
the eagerness with which she had responded to the
call. Bounding along with a gladness of the heart
which lent additional lustre to her transcendent
brightness, she suddenly found herself surrounded in
the garden by Lady Maud and her friends. The
daughter of Lord de Mowbray, who could conceive
nothing but humility as the cause of her alarmed
look, attempted to reassure her by condescending
volubility, turning often to her friends and praising in
admiring interrogatories Sybil's beauty.

'And we took advantage of your absence,' said
Lady Maud in a tone of amiable artlessness, ' to find
out all about you. And what a pity we did not
know you when you were at the convent, because
then you might have been constantly at the castle;
indeed 1 should have insisted on it. But still I hear
we are neighbours; you must promise to pay me a
visit, you must indeed. Is not she beautiful ? ' she
added in a lower but still distinct voice to her friend.
'Do you know, I think there is so much beauty
among the lower order.'

SYBIL

Mr. Mountchesney and Lord Milford poured forth
several insipid compliments, accompanied with some
speaking looks which they flattered themselves could
not be misconstrued. Sybil said not a word, but an-
swered each flood of phrases with a cold reverence.

Undeterred by her somewhat haughty demeanour,
which Lady Maud only attributed to the novehy of
her situation, her ignorance of the world, and her
embarrassment under this overpowering condescen-
sion, the good-tempered and fussy daughter of Lord
de Mowbray proceeded to reassure Sybil, and to en-
force on her that this perhaps unprecedented descent
from superiority was not a mere transient courtliness
of the moment, and that she really might rely on
her patronage and favourable feeling.

* You really must come and see me,' said Lady
Maud, ' I shall never be happy till you have made
me a visit. Where do you live? I will come and
fetch you myself in the carriage. Now let us fix a
day at once. Let me see, this is Saturday. What
say you to next Monday ? '

*I thank you,' said Sybil, very gravely, * but I
never quit my home.'

'What a darling!' exclaimed Lady Maud looking
round at her friends. Ms not she? I know exactly
what you feel. But really you shall not be the least
embarrassed. It may feel strange at first, to be sure,
but then I shall be there; and do you know I look
upon you quite as my protegee.'

' ProUg^e,' said Sybil. 'I live with my father.'

*What a dear!' said Lady Maud, looking round to
Lord Milford. * Is not she naive ? '

' And are you the guardian of these beautiful flow-
ers ? ' said Mr. .Mountchesney.

272 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Sybil signified a negative, and added, ' Mrs. TrafTord
is very proud of them.'

*You must see the flowers at Mowbray Castle,'
said Lady Maud. 'They are unprecedented, are they
not. Lord Milford ? You know you said the other
day that they were equal to Mrs. Lawrence's. I am
charmed to find you are fond of flowers,' continued
Lady Maud; 'you will be so delighted with Mowbray.
Ah! mama is calling us. Now fix; shall it be Mon-
day?'

'Indeed,' said Sybil, '1 never leave my home. I
am one of the lower order, and live only among the
lower order. I am here to-day merely for a few hours
to pay an act of homage to a benefactor.'

'Well, I shall come and fetch you,' said Lady
Maud, covering her surprise and mortification by a
jaunty air that would not confess defeat.

'And so shall I,' said Mr. Mountchesney.

'And so shall 1,' whispered Lord Milford, linger-
ing a little behind.

The great and distinguished party had disappeared;
their glittering barouche, their prancing horses, their
gay grooms, all had vanished; the sound of their
wheels was no longer heard. Time flew on; the bell
announced that the labour of the week had closed.
There was a half holiday always on the last day of
the week at Mr. Trafford's settlement; and every man,
woman, and child, were paid their wages in the great
room before they left the mill. Thus the expensive
and evil habits which result from wages being paid
in public-houses were prevented. There was also in
this system another great advantage for the workpeo-
ple. They received their wages early enough to re-
pair to the neighbouring markets and make their

SYBIL

273

purchases for the morrow. This added greatly to their
comfort, and, rendering it unnecessary for them to
run in debt to the shopkeepers, added really to their
wealth. Mr. Trafford thought that next to the amount
of wages, the most important consideration was the
method in which wages are paid; and those of our
readers who may have read or can recall the sketches,
neither coloured nor exaggerated, which we have
given in the early part of this volume of the very
different manner in which the working classes may
receive the remuneration for their toil, will probably
agree with the sensible and virtuous master of Wal-
ter Gerard.

He, accompanied by his daughter and Egremont,
is now on his way home. A soft summer afternoon;
the mild beam still gilding the tranquil scene; a river,
green meads full of kine, woods vocal with the joy-
ous song of the thrush and the blackbird; and in the
distance, the lofty breast of the purple moor, still
blazing in the sun: fair sights and renovating sounds
after a day of labour passed in walls and amid the
ceaseless and monotonous clang of the spindle and
the loom. So Gerard felt it, as he stretched his great
limbs in the air and inhaled its perfumed volume.

'Ah! I was made for this, Sybil,' he exclaimed;
*but never mind, my child, never mind; tell me more
of your fine visitors.'

Egremont found the walk too short; fortunately,
from the undulation of the vale, they could not see
the cottage until within a hundred yards of it. When
they were in sight, a man came forth from the gar-
den to greet them; Sybil gave an exclamation of
pleasure; it was Morley.

14 B. D.— 18

CHAPTER XXXI.

Stephen Pays a Visit.

ORLEY greeted Gerard and his daugh-
ter with great warmth, and then
looked at Egremont. * Our compan-
ion in the ruins of Marney Abbey,'
said Gerard; *you and our friend
Franklin here should become ac-
quainted, Stephen, for you both follow the same craft.
He is a journalist like yourself, and is our neighbour
for a time, and yours.'

'What journal are you on, may I ask.?' inquired
Morley.

Egremont reddened, was confused, and then re-
plied, M have no claim to the distinguished title of a
journalist. I am but a reporter; and have some
special duties here.'

'Hem!' said Morley; and then taking Gerard by
the arm, he walked away with him, leaving Egre-
mont and Sybil to follow them.

'Well I have found him, Walter.'

'What, Hatton?'

'No, no; the brother.'

'And what knows he?'

'Little enough; yet something. Our man lives
(274)

SYBIL

275

and prospers; these are facts, but where he is, or
what he is — not a clue.'

'And this brother cannot help us?'

'On the contrary, he sought information from me;
he is a savage, beneath even our worst ideas of pop-
ular degradation. All that is ascertained is that our
man exists and is well-to-do in the world. There
comes an annual and anonymous contribution, and
not a light one, to his brother. I examined the post-
marks of the letters, but they all varied, and were
evidently arranged to mislead. I fear you will deem
I have not done much; yet it was wearisome enough,
I can tell you.'

'I doubt it not; and I am sure, Stephen, you have
done all that man could. I was fancying that I
should hear from you to-day; for what think you has
happened? My lord himself, his family and train,
have all been in state to visit the works, and I had
to show them. Queer that, wasn't it ? He offered me
money when it was over. How much I know not, I
would not look at it. Though to be sure, they were
perhaps my own rents, eh ? But I pointed to the sick
box, and his own dainty hand deposited the sum there.'

"Tis very strange. And you were with him face
to face?'

'Face to face. Had you brought me news of the
papers, I should have thought that Providence had
rather a hand in it; but now, we are still at sea.'

'Still at sea,' said Morley musingly, 'but he lives
and prospers. He will turn up yet, Walter.'

'Amen! Since you have taken up this thing,
Stephen, it is strange how my mind has hankered
after the old business, and yet it ruined my father,
and mayhap may do as bad for his son.'

276 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'We will not think that,' said Morley. 'At present
we will think of other things. You may guess I am
a bit wearied; I think I'll say good night; you have
strangers with you.'

'Nay, nay, man; nay. This Franklin is a likely
lad enough; I think you will take to him. Prithee
come in. Sybil will not take it kindly if you go,
after so long an absence; and I am sure I shall not.'

So they entered together.

The evening passed in various conversation,
though it led frequently to the staple subject of talk
beneath the roof of Gerard — the condition of the
people. What Morley had seen in his recent excur-
sion afforded materials for many comments.

' The domestic feeling is fast vanishing among the
working classes of this country,' said Gerard; 'nor is
it wonderful; the home no longer exists.'

'But there are means of reviving it,' said Egre-
mont; 'we have witnessed them to-day. Give men
homes, and they will have soft and homely notions.
If all men acted like Mr. Trafford, the condition of
the people would be changed.'

'But all men will not act like Mr. Trafford,' said
Morley. ' It requires a sacrifice of self which cannot
be expected, which is unnatural. It is not individual
influence that can renovate society; it is some new
principle that must reconstruct it. You lament the
expiring idea of home. It would not be expiring if
it were worth retaining. The domestic principle has
fulfilled its purpose. The irresistible law of progress
demands that another should be developed. It will
come; you may advance or retard, but you cannot
prevent it. It will work out like the development of
organic nature. In the present state of civilisation,

SYBIL

277

and with the scientific means of happiness at our com-
mand, the notion of home should be obsolete. Home
is a barbarous idea; the method of a rude age; home
is isolation; therefore anti-social. What we want is
community.'

Mt is all very fine,' said Gerard, *and I dare say
you are right, Stephen; but I like stretching my feet
on my own hearth.'

CHAPTER XXXII.

Parting.

IME passes with a measured and
memorable wing during the first
period of a sojourn in a new place,
among new characters and new
manners. Every person, every in-
cident, every feeling, touches and
stirs the imagination. The restless mind creates and ob-
serves at the same time. Indeed, there is scarcely
any popular tenet more erroneous than that which
holds that when time is slow, life is dull. It is very
often, and very much the reverse. If we look back
on those passages of our life which dwell most upon
the memory, they are brief periods full of action and
novel sensation.

Egremont found this to be true during the first
days of his new residence in Mowedale. The first
week, an epoch in his life, seemed an age; at
the end of the first month, he began to deplore the
swiftness of time, and almost to moralise over the
brevity of existence. He found that he was leading
a life of perfect happiness, but of remarkable sim-
plicity; he wished it might never end, but felt
difficulty in comprehending how, in the first days of
his experience of it, it had seemed so strange; almost
(278)

SYBIL

as strange as it was sweet. The day, that commenced
early, was passed in reading; books lent him often,
too, by Sybil Gerard; sometimes in a ramble with
her and Morley, who had time much at his command,
to some memorable spot in the neighbourhood, or in
the sport which the river and the rod secured Egre-
mont. In the evening, he invariably repaired to the
cottage of Gerard, beneath whose humble roof he
found every female charm that can fascinate, and con-
versation that stimulated his intelligence.

Gerard was ever the same; hearty, simple, with a
depth of native thought on the subjects on which they
touched, and with a certain grandeur of sentiment
and conception which contrasted with his social posi-
tion, but which became his idiosyncrasy. Sybil spoke
little, but hung upon the accents of her father; yet
ever and anon her rich tones conveyed to the charmed
ear of Egremont some deep conviction, the earnest-
ness of her intellect as remarkable as the almost
sacred repose of her mien and manner. Of Morley,
at first Egremont saw a great deal: he lent our friend
books, opened, with unreserve and with great richness
of speculative and illustrative power, on the questions
which ever engaged him, and which were new and
highly interesting to his companion. But, as time
advanced, whether it were that the occupations of
Morley increased, and the calls on his hours left him
fewer occasions for the indulgence of social inter-
course, Egremont saw him seldom, except at Gerard's
cottage, where generally he might be found in the
course of the week, and their rambles together had
entirely ceased.

Alone, Egremont mused much over the daughter
of Gerard, but, shrinking from the precise and the

28o BENJAMIN DISRAELI

definite, his dreams were delightful but vague. All
that he asked was, that his present life should go on
for ever; he wished for no change, and at length al-
most persuaded himself that no change could arrive;
as men who are basking in a summer sun, surrounded
by bright and beautiful objects, cannot comprehend
how the seasons can ever alter; that the sparkling
foliage should shrivel and fall away, the foaming
waters become icebound, and the blue serene a dark
and howling space.

In this train of mind, the early days of October
having already stolen on him, an incident occurred
which startled him in his retirement, and rendered it
necessary that he should instantly quit it. Egremont
had entrusted the secret of his residence to a faithful
servant who communicated with him, when neces-
sary, under his assumed name. Through these means
he received a letter from his mother, written from
London, where she had unexpectedly arrived, en-
treating him, in urgent terms, to repair to her with-
out a moment's delay, on a matter of equal interest
and importance to herself and him. Such an appeal
from such a quarter, from the parent that had ever
been kind, and the friend that had ever been faithful,
was not for a moment to be neglected. Already a
period had elapsed since its transmission, which Egre-
mont regretted. He resolved at once to quit Mowe-
dale, nor could he console himself with the prospect
of an immediate return. Parliament was to assemble
in the ensuing month, and, independently of the un-
known cause which summoned him immediately to
town, he was well aware that much disagreeable
business awaited him which could no longer be post-
poned. He had determined not to take his seat unless

SYBIL

281

the expenses of his contest were previously discharged,
and, despairing of his brother's aid, and shrinking
from trespassing any further on his mother's re-
sources, the future looked gloomy enough: indeed,
nothing but the frequent presence and the constant
influence of Sybil had driven from his mind the
ignoble melancholy which, relieved by no pensive
fancy, is the invariable attendant of pecuniary em-
barrassment.

And now he was to leave her. The event, rather
the catastrophe, which, under any circumstances,
could not be long postponed, was to be precipitated.
He strolled up to the cottage to bid her farewell, and
to leave kind words for her father. Sybil was not
there. The old dame who kept their home informed
him that Sybil was at the convent, but would return
in the evening. It was impossible to quit Mowedale
without seeing Sybil; equally impossible to postpone
his departure. But by travelling through the night,
the lost hours might be regained. So Egremont made
his arrangements, and awaited with anxiety and im-
patience the last evening.

The evening, like his heart, was not serene. The
soft air that had lingered so long with them, a
summer visitant in an autumnal sky, and loth to part,
was no more present. A cold harsh wind, gradually
rising, chilled the system, and grated on the nerves.
There was misery in its blast, and depression in its
moan. Egremont felt infinitely dispirited. The land-
scape around him, that he had so often looked upon
with love and joy, was dull and hard; the trees
dingy, the leaden waters motionless, the distant hills
rough and austere. Where was that translucent sky,
once brilliant as his enamoured fancy; those bowery

282 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

groves of aromatic fervour wherein he had loved to
roam and muse; that river of swift and sparkling
light that flowed and flashed like the current of his
enchanted hours? All vanished, as his dreams.

He stood before the cottage of Gerard; he recalled
the eve that he had first gazed upon its moonlit gar-
den. What wild and delicious thoughts were then
his! They were gone like the illumined hour. Nature
and fortune had alike changed. Prescient of sorrow,
almost prophetic of evil, he opened the cottage door,
and the first person his eye encountered was Morley.

Egremont had not met him for some time, and
his cordial greeting of Egremont to-night contrasted
with the coldness, not to say estrangement, which to
the regret and sometimes the perplexity of Egremont
had gradually grown up between them. Yet on no
occasion was his presence less desired by our friend.
Morley was talking, as Egremont entered, with great
animation; in his hand a newspaper, on a paragraph
contained in which he was commenting. The name
of Marney caught the ear of Egremont, who turned
rather pale at the sound, and hesitated on the thresh-
old. The unembarrassed welcome of his friends,
however, reassured him, and in a moment he even
ventured to inquire the subject of their conversation.
Morley, immediately referring to the newspaper, said,
'This is what 1 have just read:

'"Extraordinary Sport at the Earl of Marney's.
On Wednesday, in a small cover called the Horns,
near Marney Abbey, his Grace the Duke of Fitz-
Aquitaine, the Earl of Marney, Colonel Rippe, and
Captain Grouse, with only four hours' shooting,
bagged the extraordinary number of seven hundred

SYBIL

283

and thirty head of game, namely, hares three hun-
dred and thirty-nine; pheasants two hundred and
twenty-one; partridges thirty-four; rabbits eighty-
seven; and the following day upwards of fifty hares,
pheasants, &c. (wounded the previous day), were
picked up. Out of the four hours' shooting, two of
the party were absent an hour and a half, namely,
the Earl of Marney and Captain Grouse, attending an
agricultural meeting in the neighbourhood; the noble
earl, with his usual considerate condescension, having
kindly consented personally to distribute the various
prizes to the labourers whose good conduct entitled
them to the distinction."

'What do you think of that. Franklin?' said
Morley. 'That is our worthy friend of Marney Ab-
bey, where we first met. You do not know this
part of the country, or you would smile at the con-
siderate condescension of the worst landlord in Eng-
land; and who was, it seems, thus employed the
day or so after his battue, as they call it.' And
Morley turning the paper read another paragraph:

' " At a Petty Sessions holden at the Green Dragon
Inn, Marney, Friday, October — , 1837.

'"Magistrates present: The Earl of Marney, the
Rev. Felix Flimsey, and Captain Grouse.

'"Information against Thomas Hind for a trespass
in pursuit of game in Blackrock Wood, the property
of Sir Vavasour Firebrace, Bart. The case was dis-
tinctly proved, several wires being found in the
pocket of the defendant. Defendant was fined in the
full penalty of forty shillings and costs twenty-seven;
the Bench being of opinion there was no excuse for

284 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

him, Hind being in regular employ as a farm-labourer
and gaining his seven shillings a week. Defendant,
being unable to pay the penalty, was sent for two
months to Marham gaol.'"

'What a pity,' said Morley, 'that Robert Hind, in-
stead of meditating the snaring of a hare, had not
been fortunate enough to pick up a maimed one
crawling about the fields the day after the battue. It
would certainly have been better for himself; and, if
he has a wife and family, better for the parish.'

'Oh!' said Gerard, 'I doubt not they were all
picked up by the poulterer who has the contract:
even the Normans did not sell their game.'

'The question is,' said Morley, 'would you rather
be barbarous or mean; that is the alternative presented
by the real and the pseudo Norman nobility of Eng-
land. Where I have been lately, there is a Bishops-
gate Street merchant who has been made for no
conceivable public reason a baron bold. Bigod and
Bohun could not enforce the forest laws with such
severity as this dealer in cotton and indigo.'

'It is a difficult question to deal with, this affair
of the game laws,' said Egremont; 'how will you
reach the evil? Would you do away with the of-
fence of trespass ? And if so, what is your protection
for property?*

'It comes to a simple point though,' said Morley,
'the territorialists must at length understand that they
cannot at the same time have the profits of a farm
and the pleasures of a chase.'

At this moment entered Sybil. At the sight of
her, the remembrance that they were about to part
nearly overwhelmed Egremont. Her supremacy over

SYBIL

285

his spirit was revealed to him, and nothing but the
presence of other persons could have prevented him
from avowing his entire subjection. His hand trem-
bled as he touched hers, and his eye, searching yet
agitated, would have penetrated her serene soul.
Gerard and Morley, somewhat withdrawn, pursued
their conversation; while Egremont, hanging over
Sybil, attempted to summon courage to express to
her his sad adieu. It was in vain. Alone, perhaps
he might have poured forth a passionate farewell.
But constrained he became embarrassed; and his con-
duct was at the same time tender and perplexing.
He asked and repeated questions which had already
been answered. His thoughts wandered from their
conversation, but not from her with whom he should
have conversed. Once their eyes met, and Sybil ob-
served his suffused with tears. Once he looked round
and caught the glance of Morley, instantly withdrawn,
but not easy to be forgotten.

Shortly after this and earlier than his wont, Morley
rose and wished them good night. He shook hands
with Egremont and bade him farewell with some
abruptness. Harold, who seemed half asleep, sud-
denly sprang from the side of his mistress and gave
an agitated bark. Harold was never very friendly to
Morley, who now tried to soothe him, but in vain.
The dog looked fiercely at him and barked again, but,
the moment Morley had disappeared, Harold resumed
his usual air of proud, high-bred gentleness, and
thrust his nose into the hand of Egremont, who
patted him with fondness.

The departure of Morley was a great relief to Egre-
mont, though the task that was left was still a
painful effort. He rose and walked for a moment up

286 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

and down the room, and commenced an unfinished
sentence, approached the hearth, and leant over the
mantel; and then at length extending his hand to
Gerard, he exclaimed, in a trembling voice, ' Best of
friends, I must leave Mowedale.'

M am very sorry,' said Gerard; 'and when?'

'Now,' said Egremont.

*Now!' said Sybil.

'Yes; this instant. My summons is urgent. I
ought to have left this morning. I came here then to
bid you farewell,' he said, looking at Sybil, * to ex-
press to you how deeply 1 was indebted to you for
all your goodness; how dearly 1 shall cherish the
memory of these happy days, the happiest I have
ever known;' and his voice faltered. M came also to
leave a kind message for you, my friend, a hope that
we might meet again and soon, but your daughter
was absent, and I could not leave Mowedale without
seeing either of you. So I must contrive to get on
through the night.'

*WelI, we lose a pleasant neighbour,' said Gerard;
' we shall miss you, I doubt not, eh, Sybil ? '

But Sybil had turned away her head; she was
leaning over and seemed to be caressing Harold, and
was silent.

How much Egremont would have liked to have
offered or invited correspondence; to have proffered
his services, when the occasion permitted; to have
said or proposed many things that might have cher-
ished their acquaintance or friendship; but, embar-
rassed by his incognito and all its consequent deception,
he could do nothing but tenderly express his regret
at parting, and speak vaguely and almost myster-
iously of their soon meeting again. He held out

SYBIL

287

again his hand to Gerard, who shook it heartily:
then approaching Sybil, Egremont said, ' You have
shown me a thousand kindnesses, which I cherish,'
he added in a lower tone, 'above all human circum-
stances. Would you deign to let this volume lie upon
your table?' and he offered Sybil an English translation
of Thomas a Kempis, illustrated by some masterpieces.
In its first page was written 'Sybil, from a faithful
friend.'

' I accept it,' said Sybil, with a trembling voice
and rather pale, 'in remembrance of a friend.' She
held forth her hand to Egremont, who retained it for
an instant, and then bending very low, pressed it to
his lips. As with an agitated heart he hastily crossed
the threshold of the cottage, something seemed to
hold him back. He turned round. The bloodhound
had seized him by the coat, and looked up to him
with an expression of affectionate remonstrance against
his departure. Egremont bent down, caressed Harold,
and released himself from his grasp.

When Egremont left the cottage, he found the
country enveloped in a thick white mist, so that
had it not been for some huge black shadows which
he recognised as the crests of trees, it would have
been very difficult to discriminate the earth from the
sky, and the mist thickening as he advanced, even
these fallacious landmarks threatened to disappear.
He had to walk to Mowbray to catch a night train
for London. Every moment was valuable, but the
unexpected and increasing obscurity rendered his prog-
ress slow and even perilous. The contiguity to the
river made every step important. He had, according
to his calculations, proceeded nearly as far as his old
residence, ajnd notwithstanding the careless courage of

288 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

youth and the annoyance of relinquishing a project,
intolerable at that season of life, was meditating the
expediency of renouncing that night the attempt on
Mowbray and of gaining his former quarters for shelter.
He stopped, as he had stopped several times before,
to calculate rather than to observe. The mist was so
thick that he could not see his own extended hand.
It was not the first time that it had occurred to him
that some one or some thing was hovering about his
course.

'Who is there?' exclaimed Egremont. But no one
answered.

He moved on a little, but very slowly. He felt
assured that his ear caught a contiguous step. He re-
peated his interrogatory in a louder tone, but it ob-
tained no response. Again he stopped. Suddenly he
was seized; an iron grasp assailed his throat, a hand
of steel griped his arm. The unexpected onset hur-
ried him on. The sound of waters assured him that
he was approaching the precipitous bank of that part
of the river which, from a ledge of pointed rocks,
here formed rapids. Vigorous and desperate, Egre-
mont plunged like some strong animal on whom a
beast of prey had made a fatal spring. His feet clung
to the earth as if they were held by some magnetic
power. With his disengaged arm he grappled with
his mysterious and unseen foe.

At this moment he heard the deep bay of a hound.

* Harold!' he exclaimed. The dog, invisible, sprang
forward and seized upon his assailant. So violent
was the impulse that Egremont staggered and fell,
but he fell freed from his dark enemy. Stunned and
exhausted, some moments elapsed before he was en-
tirely himself. The wind had suddenly changed; a

SYBIL

289

violent gust had partially dispelled the mist; the out-
line of the landscape was in many places visible.
Beneath him were the rapids of the Mowe, over
which a watery moon threw a faint, flickering light.
Egremont was lying on its precipitous bank; and
Harold, panting, was leaning over him and looking in
his face, and sometimes licking him with that tongue
which, though not gifted with speech, had spoken
so seasonably in the moment of danger.

14 B, D.— 19

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Politicians in Petticoats.

RE you going down to the House,
Egerton?' inquired Mr. Berners at
Brooks's, of a brother M.P., about
four o'clock in the early part of
the spring of 1839.
* The moment I have sealed this
letter; we will walk down together, if you like;' and
in a few minutes they left the club.

'Our fellows are in a sort of fright about this Ja-
maica bill,' said Mr. Egerton, in an undertone, as if
he were afraid a passer-by might hear him. ' Don't
say anything about it, but there's a screw loose.'
'The deuce! But how do you mean?'
* They say the Rads are going to throw us over.'
' Talk, talk. They have threatened this half-a-
dozen times. Smoke, sir; it will end in smoke.'

'1 hope it may; but I know, in great confidence,
mind you, that Lord John was saying something
about it yesterday.'

'That may be; I believe our fellows are heartily
sick of the business, and perhaps would be glad of
an excuse to break up the government: but we must
not have Peel in; nothing could prevent dissolution.'
( 290 )

SYBIL

291

'Their fellows go about and say that Peel would
not dissolve if he came in.'
' Trust him ! '

'He has had enough of dissolutions, they say.
' Why, after all, they have not done him much
harm. Even '34 was a hit.'

* Whoever dissolves, ' said Mr. Egerton, ' I do not
think there will be much of a majority either way in
our time.'

* We have seen strange things,' said Mr. Berners.

' They never would think of breaking up the gov-
ernment without making their peers,' said Mr. Eger-
ton.

' The Queen is not over partial to making more
peers; and when parties are in the present state of
equality, the Sovereign is no longer a mere pageant.'

' They say her Majesty is more touched about these
affairs of the Chartists than anything else,' said Mr.
Egerton.

'They are rather queer; but for my part I have no
serious fears of a Jacquerie.'

'Not if it comes to an outbreak; but a passive re-
sistance Jacquerie is altogether a different thing.
When we see a regular convention assembled in
London and holding its daily meetings in Palace Yard,
and a general inclination evinced throughout the
country to refrain from the consumption of excisable
articles, I cannot help thinking that affairs are more
serious than you imagine. I know the government
are all on the qui vive,'

'Just the fellows we wanted!* exclaimed Lord
Fitz-Heron, who was leaning on the arm of Lord
Milford, and who met Mr. Egerton and his friend in
Pall Mall.

292 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

*We want a brace of pairs,' said Lord Milford.
'Will you two fellows pair?'

'I must go down,' said Mr. Egerton; 'but I will
pair from half-past seven to eleven.'

'I just paired with Ormsby at White's,' said Ber-
ners, * not half an hour ago. We are both going to
dine at Eskdale's, and so it was arranged. Have you
any news to-day?'

'Nothing; except they say that Alfred Mountches-
ney is going to marry Lady Joan Fitz-Warene/ said
Lord Milford.'

' She has been given to so many,' said Mr. Egerton.

'It is always so with these great heiresses,' said
his companion. 'They never marry. They cannot
bear the thought of sharing their money. I bet Lady
Joan will turn out another specimen of the Tabitha
Croesus.'

'Well, put down our pair, Egerton,' said Lord
Fitz-Heron. 'You do not dine at Sidonia's by any
chance ? '

'Would that I did! You will have the best dishes
and the best guests. I feed at old Malton's: per-
haps a tete-d'tite: Scotch broth and to tell him the
news!'

'There is nothing like being a dutiful nephew,
particularly when one's uncle is a bachelor and has
twenty thousand a year,' said Lord Milford. ' Au
revoir ! I suppose there will be no division to-night.'

' No chance.'

Egerton and Berners walked on a little further.
As they came to the Golden Ball, a lady quitting the
shop was just about to get into her carriage; she
stopped as she recognised them. It was Lady Fire-
brace.

SYBIL

293

*Ah! Mr. Berners, how d'ye do? You were just
the person I wanted to see! How is Lady Augusta,
Mr. Egerton.?^ You have no idea, Mr. Berners, how I
have been fighting your battles!'

'Really, Lady Firebrace,' said Mr. Berners, rather
uneasy, for he had perhaps, Hke most of us, a pe-
culiar dislike to being attacked or cheapened. ' You
are too good.'

'Oh! I don't care what a person's politics are!'
exclaimed Lady Firebrace, with an air of affectionate
devotion. * I should be very glad indeed to see you
one of us. You know your father was! But if any
one is my friend, I never will hear him attacked be-
hind his back without fighting his battles: and I cer-
tainly did fight yours last night.'

'Pray tell me where it was?'

'Lady Crumbleford — '

'Confound Lady Crumbleford!' said Mr. Berners,
indignant, but a little relieved.

'No, no; Lady Crumbleford told Lady Alicia Sev-
ern.'

'Yes, yes,' said Berners, a little pale, for he was
touched.

'But I cannot stop,' said Lady Firebrace. 'I must
be with Lady St. Julians exactly at a quarter past
four;' and she sprang into her carriage.

'I would sooner meet any woman in London than
Lady Firebrace,' said Mr. Berners; 'she makes me
uneasy for the day; she contrives to convince me that
the whole world are employed behind my back in
abusing or ridiculing me.'

'It is her way,' said Egerton; 'she proves her
zeal by showing you that you are odious. It is very
successful with people of weak nerves. Scared at

294 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

their general unpopularity, they seek refuge with the
very person who at the same time assures them of
their odium and alone believes it unjust. She rules
that poor old goose, Lady Gramshawe, who feels
that Lady Firebrace makes her life miserable, but is
convinced that if she break with the torturer, she
loses her only friend.'

'There goes a man who is as much altered as
any fellow of our time.'

'Not in his looks; I was thinking the other night
that he was better-looking than ever.*

*0h! no; not in his looks, but in his life. I was
at Christchurch with him, and we entered the world
about the same time. I was rather before him.
He did everything, and did it well. And now one
never sees him, except at the House. He goes no-
where; and they tell me he is a regular reading
man.'

*Do you think he looks to office?* ,

*He does not put himself forward.*

'He attends; and his brother will always be able
to get anything for him,' said Egerton.

'Oh! he and Marney never speak; they hate each
other.'

'By Jove! however, there is his mother; with this
marriage of hers and Deloraine House, she will be
their grandest dame.'

'She is the only good woman the Tories have: I
think their others do them harm, from Lady St. Ju-
lians down to your friend Lady Firebrace. 1 wish
Lady Deloraine were with us. She keeps their men
together wonderfully; makes her house agreeable; and
then her manner, it certainly is perfect; natural, and
yet refined.'

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295

'Lady Mina Blake has an idea that, far from look-
ing to office, Egremont's heart is faintly with his
party; and that if it were not for the Marchioness — '

' We might gain him, eh ? '

'Hem; 1 hardly know that: he has got crotchets
about the people, I am told.'

'What, the ballot and household suffrage?'

* ' Gad ! I believe it is quite a different sort of a
thing. 1 do not know what it is exactly; but I un-
derstand he is crotchety.'

'Well, that will not do for Peel. He does not
like crotchety men. Do you see that, Egerton ? '

At this moment, Mr. Egerton and his friend were
about to step over from Trafalgar-square to Charing
Cross. They observed the carriages of Lady St. Ju-
lians and the Marchioness of Deloraine drawn up side
by side in the middle of the street, and those two
eminent stateswomen in earnest conversation. Eger-
ton and Berners bov/ed and smiled, but could not
hear the brief but not uninteresting words that have
nevertheless reached us.

'I give them eleven,' said Lady St. Julians.

'Well, Charles tells me,' said Lady Deloraine,
'that Sir Thomas says so, and he certainly is gener-
ally right; but it is not Charles's own opinion.'

'Sir Thomas, I know, gives them eleven,' said
Lady St. Julians; 'and that would satisfy me; and we
will say eleven. But 1 have a list here,' and she
slightly elevated her brow, and then glanced at Lady
Deloraine with a piquant air, ' which proves that they
cannot have more than nine; but this is in the greatest
confidence: of course between us there can be no se-
crets. It is Mr. Tadpole's list; nobody has seen it
but myself; not even Sir Robert. Lord Grubminster

296 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

has had a stroke; they are concealing it, but Mr.
Tadpole has found it out. They wanted to pair him
off with Colonel Fantomme, who they think is dy-
ing; but Mr. Tadpole has got a mesmerist who has
done wonders for him, and who has guaranteed that
he shall vote. Well, that makes a difference of one.'

'And then Sir Henry Churton — '

*0h! you know it,' said Lady St. Julians, looking
slightly mortified. 'Yes; he votes with us.'

Lady Deloraine shook her head. '1 think,' she
-said, ' I know the origin of that report. Quite a
mistake. He is in a bad humour, has been so the
whole session, and he was at Lady Alice Fermyne's
and did say all sorts of things. All that is true. But
he told Charles this morning, on a committee, that he
should vote with the Government.'

'Stupid man!' exclaimed Lady St. Julians; '1 never
could bear him. And I have sent his vulgar wife
and great staring daughter a card for next Wednes-
day! Well, I hope affairs will soon be brought to a
crisis, for I do not think I can bear much longer this
life of perpetual sacrifice,' added Lady St. Julians, a little
out of temper, both because she had lost a vote and
found her friend and rival better informed than herself.

'There is no chance of a division to-night,' said
Lady Deloraine.

'That is settled,' said Lady St. Julians. 'Adieu,
my dear friend. We meet, 1 believe, at dinner?'

'Plotting,' said Mr. Egerton to Mr. Berners, as
they passed the great ladies.

'The only consolation one has,' said Berners, 'is,
that if they do turn us out. Lady Deloraine and Lady
St. Julians must quarrel, for they both want the same
thing.'

SYBIL

'Lady Deloraine will have it,' said Egerton.

Here they picked up Mr. Jermyn, a young Tory
M. P., whom perhaps the reader may remember at
Mowbray Castle; and they walked on together, Eger-
ton and Berners trying to pump him as to the expec-
tations of his friends.

'How will Trodgits go?' said Egerton.

'I think Trodgits will stay away,' said Jermyn.

'Whom do you give that new man to, that north-
country borough fellow; what's his name?' said
Berners.

'Blugsbyl oh, Blugsby dined with Peel,' said
Jermyn.

'Our fellows say dinners are no good,' said Eger-
ton; 'and they certainly are a cursed bore: but you
may depend upon it they do for the burgesses. We
don't dine our men half enough. Now Blugsby was
just the sort of fellow to be caught by dining with
Peel; and 1 dare say they made Peel remember to take
wine with him. We got Melbourne to give a grand
feed the other day to some of our men who want at-
tention, they say, and he did not take wine with a
single guest. He forgot. 1 wonder what they are
doing at the House! Here is Spencer May, he will
tell us. Well, what is going on?'

'Wishy is down, and Washy up.'

'No division, of course?'

'Not a chance; a regular covey ready on both
sides.'

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A Birthday Gift.

N THE morning of the same day
) that Mr. Egerton and his friend Mr.
Berners walked down together to

the House of Commons, as ap-
/ pears in our last chapter, Egremont
had made a visit to his mother, who

had married, since the commencement of this history,
the Marquis of Deloraine, a great noble who had al-
ways been her admirer. The family had been estab-
lished by a lawyer, and recently in our history. The
present Lord Deloraine, though he was gartered and
had been a viceroy, was only the grandson of an at-
torney, but one who, conscious of his powers, had
been called to the bar and died an ex-chancellor. A
certain talent was hereditary in the family. The at-
torney's son had been a successful courtier, and had
planted himself in the cabinet for a quarter of a cen-
tury. It was a maxim in this family to make great
alliances; so the blood progressively refined, and the
connections were always distinguished by power and
fashion. It was a great hit, in the second generation
of an earldom, to convert the coronet into that of a
marquis; but the son of the old chancellor lived in

(298)

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299

stirring times, and cruised for his object with the
same devoted patience with which Lord Anson watched
for the galleon. It came at last, as everything does
if men are firm and calm. The present marquis,
through his ancestry and his first wife, was allied
with the highest houses of the realm, and looked
their peer. He might have been selected as the per-
sonification of aristocracy : so noble was his appearance,
so distinguished his manner; his bow gained every
eye, his smile every heart. He was also very accom-
plished, and not ill-informed; had read a little, and
thought a little, and was in every respect a superior
man; alike famed for his favour by the fair, and the
constancy of his homage to the charming Lady Marney.

Lord Deloraine was not rich; but he was not em-
barrassed, and had the appearance of princely wealth;
a splendid family mansion with a courtyard; a noble
country seat with a magnificent park, including a
quite celebrated lake, but with few farms attached to
it. He, however, held a good patent place which had
been conferred on his descendants by the old chancellor,
and this brought in annually some thousands. His mar-
riage with Lady Marney was quite an affair of the
heart; her considerable jointure, however, did not di-
minish the lustre of his position.

It was this impending marriage, and the anxiety
of Lady Marney to see Egremont's affairs settled be-
fore it took place, which about a year and a half ago
had induced her to summon him so urgently from
Mowedale, which the reader perhaps may not have
forgotten. And now Egremont is paying one of his
almost daily visits to his mother at Deloraine House.

'A truce to politics, my dear Charles,' said Lady
Marney; 'you must be wearied with my inquiries.

300 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Besides, I do not take the sanguine view of affairs in
which some of our friends indulge. I am one of
those who think the pear is not ripe. These men
will totter on, and longer perhaps than even them-
selves imagine. I want to speak of something very
different. To-morrow, my dear son, is your birth-
day. Now I should grieve were it to pass without
your receiving something which showed that its recol-
lection was cherished by your mother. But of all silly
things in the world, the silliest is a present that is
not wanted. It destroys the sentiment a little, per-
haps, but it enhances the gift, if 1 ask you in the most
literal manner to assist me in giving you something
that really would please you.?'

*But how can I, my dear mother?' said Egre-
mont. ' You have ever been so kind and so generous
that I literally want nothing.'

*0h! you cannot be such a fortunate man as to
want nothing, Charles,' said Lady Marney with a
smile. 'A dressing-case you have; your rooms are
furnished enough: all this is in my way; but there are
such things as horses and guns, of which I know
nothing, but which men always require. You must
want a horse or a gun, Charles. Well, I should like
you to get either; the finest, the most valuable that
money can purchase. Or a brougham, Charles; what
do you think of a new brougham ? Would you like
that Barker should build you a brougham ? '

'You are too good, my dear mother. I have
horses and guns enough; and my present carriage is
all I can desire.'

' You will not assist me, then ? You are resolved
that I shall do something very stupid. For to give
you something I am determined.'

SYBIL

301

*WelI, my dear mother,' said Egremont smil-
ing, and looking round, 'give me something that is
here.'

'Choose then,' said Lady Marney; and she looked
round the satin walls of her apartment, covered with
cabinet pictures of exquisite art, and then at her tables
crowded with precious and fantastic toys.

Mt would be plunder, my dear mother,' said Egre-
mont.

'No, no; you have said it; you shall choose some-
thing. Will you have those vases?' and she pointed
to an almost matchless specimen of old Sevres porce-
lain.

'They are in too becoming a position to be dis-
turbed,' said Egremont, 'and would ill suit my quiet
chambers, where a bronze or a marble is my greatest
ornament. If you would permit me, I would rather
choose a picture.'

'Then select one at once,' said Lady Marney; 'I
make no reservation, except that Watteau, for it was
given to me by your father before we were married.
Shall it be this Cuyp?'

'I would rather choose this,' said Egremont; and
he pointed to the portrait of a saint by Allori: the
face of a beautiful young girl, radiant and yet solemn,
with rich tresses of golden brown hair, and large eyes
dark as night, fringed with ebon lashes that hung
upon the glowing cheek.

'Ah! you choose that! Well, that was a great
favourite of poor Sir Thomas Lawrence. But for my
part 1 have never seen any one in the least like it,
and 1 think I am sure that you have not.'

'It reminds me,' said Egremont musingly.

'Of what you have dreamed,' said Lady Marney.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Perhaps so,' said Egremont; 'indeed I think it
must have been a dream.'

'Well, the vision shall still hover before you,' said
his mother; 'and you shall find this portrait to-mor-
row over your chimney in the Albany.'

CHAPTER XXXV.

Social Influences.

TRANGERS must withdraw.'

'Division: clear the gallery. With-
draw.'

'Nonsense; no; it's quite ridicu-
lous; quite absurd. Some fellow
must get up. Send to the Carlton;
send to the Reform; send to Brooks's. Are your men
ready? No; are yours? I am sure I can't say. What
does it mean? Most absurd! Are there many fellows
in the library ? The smoking-room is quite full. All our
men are paired till half-past eleven. It wants five
minutes to the half-hour. What do you think of
Trenchard's speech? 1 don't care for ourselves; I am
sorry for him. Well, that is very charitable. With-
draw, withdraw; you must withdraw.'

' Where are you going, Fitz-Heron ? ' said a Con-
servative whipling.

M must go; I am paired till half-past eleven, and
it wants some minutes, and my man is not here.'
'Confound it!'

* How will it go ?'
"Gad ! I don't know.'

* Fishy, eh?'

(303)

304 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Deuced!' said the under-whip in an undertone,
pale, and speaking behind his teeth.

The division bell was still ringing; peers and diplo-
matists and strangers were turned out; members
came rushing in from the library and smoking-room;
some desperate cabs arrived just in time to land their
passengers in the waiting-room. The doors were
locked.

The mysteries of the lobby are only for the
initiated. Three quarters of an hour after the division
was called, the result was known to the exoteric
world. Majority for Ministers thirty-seven! Never
had the opposition made such a bad division, and
this too on their trial of strength for the session.
Everything went wrong. Lord Milford was away
without a pair. Mr. Ormsby, who had paired with
Mr. Berners, never came, and let his man poll; for
which he was infinitely accursed, particularly by the
expectant twelve hundred a yearers, but, not wanting
anything himself, and having an income of forty
thousand pounds paid quarterly, Mr. Ormsby bore
their reported indignation like a lamb.

There were several other similar or analogous
mischances; the Whigs contrived to poll Lord Grub-
minster in a wheeled chair; he was unconscious, but
had heard as much of the debate as a good many.
Colonel Fantomme, on the other hand, could not
come to time; the mesmerist had thrown him into a
trance from which it was fated he never should
awake: but the crash of the night was a speech
made against the opposition by one of their own
men, Mr. Trenchard, who voted with the Government.

'The rest may be accounted for,' said Lady St.
Julians to Lady Deloraine the morning after; Mt is

SYBIL

305

simply vexatious; it was a surprise and will be a
lesson: but this affair of this Mr. Trenchard — and they
tell me that William Latimer was absolutely cheering
him the whole time — what does it mean? Do you
know the man?'

'I have heard Charles speak of him, and I think
much in his favour,' said Lady Deloraine; *if he were
here, he would tell us more about it. I wonder he
does not come: he never misses looking in after a
great division and giving me all the news.'

'Do you know, my dear friend,' said Lady St.
Julians, with an air of some solemnity, 'I am half
meditating a great move? This is not a time for
trifling. It is all very well for these people to boast
of their division of last night, but it was a surprise,
and as great to them as to us. I know there is dis-
sension in the camp; ever since that finality speech
of Lord John, there has been a smouldering sedition.
Mr. Tadpole knows all about it; he has liaisons with
the frondeurs. This affair of Trenchard may do us
the greatest possible injury. When it comes to a fair
fight, the Government have not more than twelve or
so. If Mr. Trenchard and three or four others choose
to make themselves of importance, you see ? The
danger is imminent, it must be met with decision.'

*And what do you propose doing?'

' Has he a wife?'

M really do not know. I wish Charles would
come, perhaps he could tell us.'

*I have no doubt he has,' said Lady St. Julians.
'One would have met him, somehow or other, in the
course of two years, if he had not been married.
Well, married or unmarried, with his wife, or with-
out his wife, I shall send him a card for Wednesday.'

14 B. D.— 20

3o6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

And Lady St. Julians paused, overwhelmed as it were
by the commensurate vastness of her idea and her
sacrifice.

*Do not you think it would be rather sudden?'
said Lady Deloraine.

'What does that signify? He will understand it;
he will have gained his object; and all will be right.'

* But are you sure it is his object ? We do not
know the man.'

'What else can be his object?' said Lady St.
Julians. 'People get into Parliament to get on; their
aims are indefinite. If they have indulged in halluci-
nations about place before they enter the House, they
are soon freed from such distempered fancies; they
find they have no more talent than other people, and
if they had, they learn that power, patronage, and
pay are reserved for us and our friends. Well, then,
hke practical men, they look to some result, and they
get it. They are asked out to dinner more than they
would be; they move rigmarole resolutions at non-
sensical public meetings; and they get invited with
their women to assemblies at their leader's, where
they see stars and blue ribbons, and above all, us,
who, they little think, in appearing on such occasions,
make the greatest conceivable sacrifice. Well, then,
of course such people are entirely in one's power, if
one only had time and inclination to notice them.
You can do anything with them. Ask them to a ball,
and they will give you their votes; invite them to dinner,
and, if necessary, they will rescind them; but culti-
vate them, remember their wives at assemblies, and
call their daughters, if possible, by their right names;
and they will not only change their principles or
desert their party for you, but subscribe their fortunes,

SYBIL

if necessary, and lay down their lives in your service.'

'You paint them to the life, my dear Lady St.
Julians,' said Lady Deloraine laughing; 'but, with
such knowledge and such powers, why did you not
save our boroughs?'

'We had lost our heads then, I must confess,'
said Lady St. Julians. 'What with the dear King
and the dear Duke, we really had brought ourselves
to believe that we lived in the days of Versailles or
nearly; and I must admit I think we had become a
little too exclusive. Out of the cottage circle, there
was really no world, and after all we were lost, not
by insulting the people, but by snubbing the aristoc-
racy.'

The servant announced Lady Firebrace. 'Oh! my
dear Lady Deloraine. O! my dear Lady St. Julians!'
and she shook her head.

'You have no news, I suppose,' said Lady St.
Julians.

'Only about that dreadful Mr. Trenchard; you
know the reason why he ratted?'

'No, indeed,' said Lady St. Julians with a sigh.

'An invitation to Lansdowne House, for himself
and his wife ! '

'Oh! he is married, then?'

'Yes; she is at the bottom of it all. Terms regu-
larly settled beforehand. I have a note here; all the
facts.' And Lady Firebrace twirled in her hand a
bulletin from Mr. Tadpole.

'Lansdowne House is destined to cross me,' said
Lady St. Julians with bitterness.

' Well, it is provoking,' said Lady Deloraine, 'when
you had made up your mind to ask them for
Wednesday.'

3o8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Yes, that alone is a sacrifice,' said Lady St.
Julians.

'Talking over the division, I suppose,' said Egre-
mont as he entered.

'Ah! Mr. Egremont,' said Lady St. Julians. 'What
a hachis you made of it!'

Lady Firebrace shook her head, as it were re-
proachfully.

'Charles,' said Lady Deloraine, 'we were talking
of this Mr. Trenchard. Did I not once hear you say
you knew something of him?'

'Why, he is one of my intimate acquaintances.'

'Heavens! what a man for a friend!' said Lady St.
Julians.

'Heavens!* echoed Lady Firebrace raising her
hands.

' And why did you not present him to me,
Charles ? ' said Lady Deloraine.

'1 did; at Lady Peel's.'

'And why did you not ask him here.^^'

'I did several times; but he would not come.'

'He is going to Lansdowne House, though,' said
Lady Firebrace.

' I suppose you wrote the leading article in the
Standard which I have just read,' said Egremont
smiling. ' It announces in large type the secret
reasons of Mr. Trenchard's vote.'

'It is a fact,' said Lady Firebrace.

'That Trenchard is going to Lansdowne House
to-night; very likely. I have met him at Lansdowne
House half-a-dozen times. He is intimate with the
family, and lives in the same county.'

'But his wife,' said Lady Firebrace; 'that's the
point: he never could get his wife there before.'

SYBIL

309

*He has none,' said Egremont quietly.

'Then we may regain him,' said Lady St. Julians
with energy. ' You shall make a little dinner to
Greenwich, Mr. Egremont, and I will sit next to
him.'

' Fortunate Trenchard ! ' said Egremont. ' But, do
you know, I fear he is hardly worthy of his lot. He
has a horror of fine ladies; and there is nothing in
the world he more avoids than what you call soci-
ety. At home, as this morning when I breakfasted
with him, or in a circle of his intimates, he is the
best company in the world; no one so well informed,
fuller of rich humour, and more sincerely amiable.
He is popular with all who know him, except Taper,
Lady St. Julians, Tadpole, and Lady Firebrace.'

/Well, 1 think 1 will ask him still for Wednesday,'
said Lady St. Julians; 'and I will write him a little
note. If society is not his object, what is?'

*Ay!' said Egremont, 'there is a great question
for you and Lady Firebrace to ponder over. This is
a lesson for you fine ladies, who think you can
govern the world by what you call your social
influences: asking people once or twice a year
to an inconvenient crowd in your house; now
haughtily smirking, and now impertinently staring
at them; and flattering yourselves all this time, that
to have the occasional privilege of entering your
saloons, and the periodical experience of your inso-
lent recognition, is to be a reward for great exertions,
or, if necessary, an inducement to infamous tergiver-
sation.'

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Torchlight Meeting.

T WAS
though
and a
were
Moor.

night; clear and serene,
the moon had not risen;
vast concourse of persons
assembhng on Mowbray
The chief gathering col-

lected in the vicinity of some huge
rocks, one of which, pre-eminent above its fellows, and
having a broad flat head, on which some twenty per-
sons might easily stand at the same time, was called the
Druid's Altar. The ground about was strewn with stony
fragments, covered to-night with human beings, who
found a convenient resting-place amid these ruins of
some ancient temple, or rehcs of some ancient world.
The shadowy concourse increased, the dim circle of
the nocturnal assemblage each moment spread and
widened; there was the hum and stir of many thou-
sands. Suddenly in the distance the sound of martial
music: and instantly, quick as the Hghtning, and far
more wild, each person present brandished a flaming
torch, amid a chorus of cheers, that, renewed and re-
sounding, floated far away over the broad bosom of
the dusk wilderness.

The music and the banners denoted the arrival of
the leaders of the people. They mounted the craggy
(310)

SYBIL

ascent that led to the summit of the Druid's Altar,
and there, surrounded by his companions, amid the
enthusiastic shouts of the multitude, Walter Gerard
came forth to address a torchlight meeting.

His tall form seemed colossal in the uncertain and
flickering light, his rich and powerful voice reached
almost to the limit of his vast audience, now still
with expectation and silent with excitement. Their
fixed and eager glance, the mouth compressed with
fierce resolution or distended by novel sympathy, as
they listened to the exposition of their wrongs, and
the vindication of the sacred rights of labour; the
shouts and waving of the torches as some bright or
bold phrase touched them to the quick; the cause,
the hour, the scene, all combined to render the assem-
blage in a high degree exciting.

*I wonder if Warner will speak to-night,' said
Dandy Mick to Devilsdust.

'He can't pitch it in like Gerard,' replied his com-
panion.

* But he is a trump in the tender,' said the Dandy.
'The hand-looms looks to him as their man, and
thaf s a powerful section.'

' If you come to the depth of a question, there's
nothing like Stephen Morley,' said Devilsdust.
"Twould take six clergymen any day to settle him.
He knows the principles of society by heart. But
Gerard gets hold of the passions.'

'And that's the way to do the trick,' said Dandy
Mick. ' I wish he would say march, and no mis-
take.'

'There is a great deal to do before saying that,'
said Devilsdust. ' We must have discussion, because
when it comes to reasoning, the oligarchs have not

312 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

got a leg to stand on; and we must stop the con-
sumption of excisable articles, and when they have no

tin to pay the bayonets and their b y police, they

are dished.'

' You have a long head, Dusty,' said Mick.

* Why, I have been thinking of it ever since I knew
two and two made four,' said his friend. M was
not ten years old when I said to myself, it's a pretty
go this, that I should be toiling in a shoddy-hole to
pay the taxes for a gentleman what drinks his port
wine and stretches his legs on a Turkey carpet. Hear,
hear,' he suddenly exclaimed, as Gerard threw ofiF a
stinging sentence. ' Ah! that's the man for the peo-
ple. You will see, Mick, whatever happens, Gerard
is the man who will always lead.'

Gerard had ceased amid enthusiastic plaudits, and
Warner, that hand-loom weaver whom the reader may
recollect, and who had since became a popular leader
and one of the principal followers of Gerard, had also
addressed the multitude. They had cheered and
shouted, and voted resolutions, and the business of
the night was over. Now they were enjoined to dis-
perse in order and depart in peace. The band sounded
a triumphant retreat; the leaders had descended from
the Druid's Altar; the multitude were melting away,
bearing back to the town their high resolves and
panting thoughts, and echoing in many quarters the
suggestive appeals of those who had addressed them.
Dandy Mick and Devilsdust departed together; the
business of their night had not yet commenced, and
it was an important one.

They took their way to that suburb whither Ger-
ard and Morley repaired the evening of their return
from Marney Abbey; but it was not on this occasion

SYBIL

313

to pay a visit to Chaffing Jack and his brilliant sa-
loon. Winding through many obscure lanes, Mick
and his friend at length turned into a passage which
ended in a square court of a not inconsiderable size,
and which was surrounded by high buildings that had
the appearance of warehouses. Entering one of these,
and taking up a dim lamp that was placed on the
stone of an empty hearth, Devilsdust led his friend
through several unoccupied and unfurnished rooms,
until he came to one in which there were some signs
of occupation.

'Now, Mick,' said he, in a very earnest, almost
solemn tone, 'are you firm.^'

'All right, my hearty,' replied his friend, though
not without some affectation of ease.

'There is a good deal to go through,' said Devils-
dust. 'It tries a man.'

'You don't mean that?'

' But if you are firm, all's right. Now I must leave
you.'

'No, no. Dusty,' said Mick.

'I must go,' said Devilsdust; 'and you must rest
here till you are sent for. Now mind, whatever is
bid you, obey; and whatever you see, be quiet.
There,' and Devilsdust taking a flask out of his
pocket, held it forth to his friend, 'give a good pull,
man; I can't leave it you, for though your heart must
be warm, your head must be cool,' and so saying he
vanished.

Notwithstanding the animating draught, the heart
of Mick Radley trembled. There are some moments
when the nervous system defies even brandy. Mick
was on the eve of a great and solemn incident, round
which for years his imagination had gathered and

314 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

brooded. Often in that imagination he had conceived
the scene, and successfully confronted its perils or its
trials. Often had the occasion been the drama of
n>any a triumphant reverie, but the stern presence of
reality had dispelled all his fancy and all his courage.
He recalled the warning of Julia, who had often dis-
suaded him from the impending step; that warning
received with so much scorn and treated with so
much levity. He began to think that women were
always right; that Devilsdust was after all a danger-
ous counsellor; he even meditated over the possibility
of a retreat. He looked around him: the glimmering
lamp scarcely indicated the outline of the obscure
chamber. It was lofty, nor in the obscurity was it
possible for the eye to reach the ceiling, which sev-
eral huge beams seemed to cross transversely, loom-
ing in the darkness. There was apparently no window,
and the door by which they had entered was not easily
to be recognised. Mick had just taken up the lamp
and was surveying his position, when a slight noise
startled him, and looking round he beheld at some
little distance two forms which he hoped were hu-
man.

Enveloped in dark cloaks and wearing black masks,
a conical cap of the same colour adding to their con-
siderable height, each held a torch. They stood in
silence, two awful sentries.

Their appearance appalled, their stillness terrified
Mick: he remained with his mouth open, and the
lamp in his extended hand. At length, unable any
longer to sustain the solemn mystery, and plucking
up his natural audacity, he exclaimed, ' 1 say, what
do you want?'

All was silent.

SYBIL

*Come, come,' said Mick, much alarmed; * none
of this sort of thing. I say, you must speak though.'

The figures advanced; they stuck their torches in
a niche that was by; and then they placed each of
them a hand on the shoulder of Mick.

'No, no; none of that,' said Mick, trying to dis-
embarrass himself.

But, notwithstanding this fresh appeal, one of the
silent masks pinioned his arms; and in a moment the
eyes of the helpless friend of Devilsdust were band-
aged.

Conducted by these guides, it seemed to Mick
that he was traversing interminable rooms, or rather
galleries, for, once stretching out his arm, while one of
his supporters had momentarily quitted him to open
some gate or door, Mick touched a wall. At length
one of the masks spoke, and said, Mn five minutes
you will be in the presence of the Seven: prepare.'

At this moment rose the sound of distant voices
singing in concert, and gradually increasing in volume
as Mick and the masks advanced. One of these at-
tendants now notifying to their charge that he must
kneel down, Mick found he rested on a cushion,
while at the same time, his arms still pinioned, he
seemed to be left alone.

The voices became louder and louder; Mick could
distinguish the words and burthen of the hymn; he
was sensible that many persons were entering the
apartment; he could distinguish the measured tread
of some solemn procession. Round the chamber,
more than once, they moved with slow and awful
step. Suddenly that movement ceased; there was a
pause of a few minutes; at length a voice spoke. *I
denounce John Briars.'

3i6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Why?' said another.

'He offers to take nothing but piece-work; the
man who does piece-work is guilty of less defensible
conduct than a drunkard. The worst passions of our
nature are enlisted in support of piece-work. Avarice,
meanness, cunning, hypocrisy, all excite and feed upon
the miserable votary who works by the task and not
by the hour. A man who earns by piece-work forty
shillings per week, the usual wages for day-work
being twenty, robs his fellows of a week's employ-
ment; therefore 1 denounce John Briars.'

*Let it go forth,' said the other voice; 'John Briars
is denounced. If he receive another week's wages by
the piece, he shall not have the option of working
the week after for time. No. 87, see to John Briars.'

*I denounce Claughton and Hicks,' said another
voice.

'Why?'

'They have removed Gregory Ray from being a
superintendent because he belonged to this lodge.'

' Brethren, is it your pleasure that there shall be a
turn-out for ten days at Claughton and Hicks ? '

'It is our pleasure,' cried several voices.

'No. 34, give orders to-morrow that the works at
Claughton and Hicks stop till further orders.'

'Brethren,' said another voice, '1 propose the ex-
pulsion from this union of any member who shall
be known to boast of his superior ability as to either
the quantity or quality of work he can do, either in
pubhc or private company. Is it your pleasure?'

'It is our pleasure.'

'Brethren,' said a voice that seemed a presiding
one, ' before we proceed to the receipt of the revenue
from the different districts of this lodge, there is, I

SYBIL

am informed, a stranger present, who prays to be ad-
mitted into our fraternity. Are all robed in the mys-
tic robe? Are all masked in the secret mask?'
^ All!'

'Then let us pray!' And thereupon, after a move-
ment which intimated that all present were kneeling,
the presiding voice offered up an extemporary prayer
of power and even eloquence. This was succeeded
by the Hymn of Labour, and at its conclusion the
arms of the neophyte were unpinioned, and then his
eyes were unbandaged.

Mick found himself in a lofty and spacious room
lighted with many tapers. Its walls were hung with
black cloth; at a table covered with the same ma-
terial, were seated seven persons in surphces and
masked, the President on a loftier seat; above which,
on a pedestal, was a skeleton complete. On each
side of the skeleton was a man robed and masked,
holding a drawn sword; and on each side of Mick
was a man in the same garb holding a battle-axe.
On the table was the sacred volume open, and at a
distance, ranged in order on each side of the room,
was a row of persons in white robes and white
masks, and holding torches.

'Michael Radley,' said the President, 'Do you
voluntarily swear, in the presence of Almighty God
and before these witnesses, that you will execute
with zeal and alacrity, so far as in you lies, every
task and injunction that the majority of your breth-
ren, testified by the mandate of this grand committee,
shall impose upon you, in furtherance of our common
welfare, of which they are the sole judges; such as
the chastisement of nobs, the assassination of oppress-
ive and tyrannical masters, or the demolition of all

3i8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

mills, works and shops that shall be deemed by us
incorrigible? Do you swear this in the presence of
Almighty God, and before these witnesses ? '

'I do swear it,' replied a tremulous voice.

*Then rise and kiss that book.'

Mick slowly rose from his kneeling position, ad-
vanced with a trembling step, and bending, embraced
with reverence the open volume.

Immediately every one unmasked; Devilsdust came
forward, and taking Mick by the hand, led him to
the President, who received him pronouncing some
mystic rhymes. He was covered with a robe and
presented with a torch, and then ranged in order
with his companions. Thus terminated the initiation
of Dandy Mick into a Trades Union.

CHAPTER X XXVII.

The Rights of the Masses.

IS lordship has not yet rung his bell,
gentlemen.'

It was the valet of Lord Milford
that spoke, addressing from the
door of a house in Belgrave Square,
about noon, a deputation from the
National Convention, consisting of two of its dele-
gates, who waited on the young viscount, in common
with other members of the legislature, in order to
call his particular attention to the national petition
which the Convention had prepared, and which, in
the course of the session, was to be presented by
one of the members for Birmingham.

*I fear we are too early for these fine birds,' said
one delegate to the other. *Who is next on our
list ? '

'No. 27, — Street, close by; Mr. Thorough Base:
he ought to be with the people, for his father was
only a fiddler; but I understand he is quite an aristo-
crat, and has married a widow of quality.'

'Well, knock.'

Mr. Thorough Base was not at home; had re-
ceived the card of the delegates apprising him of the

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320 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

honour of their intended visit, but had made up his
mind on the subject.

No. 1 8 in the same street received them more
courteously. Here resided Mr. KremHn, who, after
hstening with patience, if not with interest, to their
^statement, apprised them that forms of government
were of no consequence, and domestic policy of no
interest; that there was only one subject which should
engage the attention of public men, because every-
thing depended on it; that was, our external system;
and that the only specific for a revival of trade and
the contentment of the people, was a general settle-
ment of the boundary questions. Finally, Mr. Kremlin
urged upon the National Convention to recast their
petition with this view, assuring them that on for-
eign policy they would have the public with them.

The deputation, in reply, might have referred, as
an evidence of the general interest excited by ques-
tions of foreign policy, to the impossibility even of a
leader making a house on one; and to the fact, that
there are not three men in the House of Commons
who even pretend to have any acquaintance with the
external circumstances of the country; they might
have added, that, even in such an assembly, Mr.
KremHn himself was distinguished for ignorance, for
he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

Their next visit was to Wriggle, a member for a
metropolitan district, a disciple of progress, who went
with the times but who took particular good care to
ascertain their complexion; and whose movements if
expedient could partake of a regressive character. As
the charter might some day turn up trumps, as well
as so many other unexpected cards and colours.
Wriggle gave his adhesion to it, but, of course, only

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provisionally; provided, that is to say, he might vote
against it at present. But he saw no harm in it, not
he, and should be prepared to support it when cir-
cumstances, that is to say, the temper of the times,
would permit him. More could hardly be expected
from a gentleman in the delicate position in which
Wriggle found himself at this moment, for he had
solicited a baronetcy of the Whigs, and had secretly
pledged himself to Taper to vote against them on the
impending Jamaica division.

Bombastes Rip snubbed them, which was hard, for
he had been one of themselves, had written confi-
dential letters in 1831 to the secretary of the Treasury,
and, 'provided his expenses were paid,* offered to
come up from the manufacturing town he now rep-
resented, at the head of a hundred thousand men,
and burn down Apsley House. But now Bombastes
Rip talked of the great middle class; of public order
and public credit. He would have said more to
them, but had an appointment in the city, being an
active member of the committee for raising a statue
to the Duke of Wellington.

Floatwell received them in the politest manner,
though he did not agree with them. What he did
agree with it was difficult to say. Clever, brisk, and
bustling, with a university reputation, and without
patrimony, Floatwell shrunk from the toils of a pro-
fession, and in the hurry-skurry of reform found him-
self to his astonishment a Parhament man. There he
had remained, but why, the Fates alone knew. The
fun of such a thing must have evaporated with the
novelty. Floatwell had entered public life in complete
ignorance of every subject which could possibly en-
gage the attention of a public man. He knew noth-

14 B. D.— 21

322 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

ing of history, national or constitutional law, had
indeed none but puerile acquirements, and had seen
nothing of life. Assiduous at committees, he gained
those superficial habits of business which are compe-
tent to the conduct of ordinary affairs, and picked up
in time some of the slang of economical questions.
Floatwell began at once with a little success, and he
kept his little success; nobody envied him it; he
hoarded his sixpences without exciting any evil
emulation. He was one of those characters who
above all things shrink from isolation, and who imag-
ine they are getting on if they are keeping company
with some who stick like themselves. He was al-
ways an idolater of some great personage who was
on the shelf, and, who, he was convinced, because
the great personage assured him of it after dinner,
would sooner or later turn out the man. At present,
Floatwell swore by Lord Dunderhead; and the game
of this little coterie, who dined together and thought
they were a party, was to be courteous to the Con-
vention.

After the endurance of an almost interminable lec-
ture on the currency from Mr. Kite, who would
pledge himself to the character if the charter would
pledge itself to one-pound notes, the two delegates
had arrived in Piccadilly, and the next member upon
the list was Lord Valentine.

Mt is two o'clock,' said one of the delegates, M
think we may venture;' so they knocked at the portal
of the court yard, and found they were awaited.

A private staircase led to the suite of rooms of
Lord Valentine, who lived in the family mansion.
The delegates were ushered through an antechamber
into a saloon which opened into a fanciful conserva-

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tory, where amid taJI tropical plants played a foun-
tain. The saloon was hung with blue satin, and
adorned with brilliant mirrors; its coved ceiling was
richly painted, and its furniture became the rest of its
decorations. On one sofa were a number of port-
folios, some open, full of drawings of costumes; a
table of pietra dura was covered with richly-boimd
volumes that appeared to have been recently referred
to; several ancient swords of extreme beauty were
lying on a couch; in a corner of the room was a fig-
ure in complete armour, black and gold, richly inlaid,
and grasping in its gauntlet the ancient standard of
England.

The two delegates of the National Convention
stared at each other, as if to express their surprise
that a dweller in such an abode should ever have
permitted them to enter it; but ere either of them
could venture to speak. Lord Valentine made his ap-
pearance.

He was a young man, above the middle height,
slender, broad-shouldered, small-waisted, of a grace-
ful presence; he was very fair, with dark blue eyes,
bright and intelligent, and features of classic precision ;
a small Greek cap crowned his long light-brown hair,
and he was enveloped in a morning robe of Indian
shawls.

*Well, gentlemen,' said his lordship, as he invited
them to be seated, in a clear and cheerful voice, and
with an unaffected tone of frankness which put his
guests at their ease; M promised to see you; well,
what have you got to say?'

The delegates made their accustomed statement;
they wished to pledge no one; all that the people
desired was a respectful discussion of their claims;

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

the national petition, signed by nearly a million and
a half of the flower of the working-classes, was
shortly to be presented to the House of Commons,
praying the House to take into consideration the five
points in which the working-classes deemed their best
interests involved; to wit, universal suffrage, vote by
ballot, annual parliaments, salaried members, and the
abolition of the property qualification.

'And supposing these five points conceded,' said
Lord Valentine, 'what do you mean to do?'

'The people then being at length really represented,'
replied one of the delegates, ' they would decide upon
the measures which the interests of the great majority
require.'

M am not so clear about that,' said Lord Valentine;
'that is the very point at issue. I do not think the
great majority are the best judges of their own inter-
ests. At all events, gentlemen, the respective advan-
tages of aristocracy and democracy are a moot point.
Well, then, finding the question practically settled in
this country, you will excuse me for not wishing to
agitate it. I give you complete credit for the sincer-
ity of your convictions; extend the same confidence
to me. You are democrats; I am an aristocrat. My
family has been ennobled for nearly three centuries;
they bore a knightly name before their elevation.
They have mainly and materially assisted in making
England what it is. They have shed their blood in
many battles; I have had two ancestors killed in the
command of our fleets. You will not underrate such
services, even if you do not appreciate their conduct
as statesmen, though that has often been laborious,
and sometimes distinguished. The finest trees in
England were planted by my family; they raised

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325

several of your most beautiful churches; they have
built bridges, made roads, dug mines, and constructed
canals, and drained a marsh of a million of acres
which bears our name to this day, and is now one
of the most flourishing portions of the country. You
talk of our taxation and our wars; and of your inven-
tions and your industry. Our wars converted an is-
land into an empire, and at any rate developed that
industry and stimulated those inventions of which
you boast. You tell me that you are the delegates
of the unrepresented working-classes of Mowbray.
Why, what would Mowbray have been if it had not
been for your aristocracy and their wars ? Your town
would not have existed; there would have been no
working-classes there to send up delegates. In fact,
you owe your very existence to us. I have told you
what my ancestors have done; I am prepared, if the
occasion requires it, not to disgrace them; I have in-
herited their great position, and I tell you fairly, gen-
tlemen, I will not relinquish it without a struggle.'

'Will you combat the people in that suit of
armour, my lord?' said one of the delegates smiling,
but in a tone of kindness and respect.

'That suit of armour has combated for the people
before this,' said Lord Valentine, 'for it stood by
Simon de Montfort on the field of Evesham.'

'My lord,' said the other delegate, 'it is well
known that you come from a great and honoured
race; and we have seen enough to-day to show that
in intelligence and spirit you are not unworthy of
your ancestry. But the great question, which your
lordship has introduced, not we, is not to be decided
by a happy instance. Your ancestors may have done
great things. What wonder! They were members

326 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

of a very limited class, which had the monopoly of
action. And the people, have not they shed their
blood in battle, though they may have commanded
fleets less often than your lordship's relatives? And
these mines and canals that you have excavated and
constructed, these woods you have planted, these
waters you have drained: had the people no hand in
these creations ? What share in these great works
had that faculty of labour whose sacred claims we
now urge, but which for centuries have been passed
over in contemptuous silence? No, my lord, we call
upon you to decide this question by the result. The
aristocracy of England have had for three centuries
the exercise of power; for the last century and a half
that exercise has been uncontrolled; they form at this
moment the most prosperous class that the history of
the world can furnish : as rich as the Roman senators,
with sources of convenience and enjoyment which
modern science could alone supply. All this is not
denied. Your order stands before Europe the most
gorgeous of existing spectacles; though you have of
late years dexterously thrown some of the odium of
your polity upon that middle class which you despise,
and who are despicable only because they imitate you,
your tenure of power is not in reality impaired. You
govern us still with absolute authority, and you govern
the most miserable people on the face of the globe.'

'And is this a fair description of the people of
England?' said Lord Valentine. *A flash of rhetoric,
I presume, that would place them lower than the
Portuguese or the Poles, the serfs of Russia, or the laz-
zaroni of Naples.'

'Infinitely lower,' said the delegate, 'for they are
not only degraded, but conscious of their degradation.

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They no longer believe in any innate difference
between the governing and the governed classes of
this country. They are sufficiently enlightened to feel
they are victims. Compared with the privileged
classes of their own land, they are in a lower state
than any other population compared with its privi-
leged classes. All is relative, my lord, and believe
me, the relations of the working-classes of England
to its privileged orders are relations of enmity, and
therefore of peril.'

*The people must have leaders,* said Lord Valen-
tine.

'And they have found them,' said the delegate.

'When it comes to a push they will follow their
nobility,' said Lord Valentine.

'Will their nobility lead them?' said the other
delegate. 'For my part, I do not pretend to be a
philosopher, and if I saw a Simon de Montfort again
I should be content to fight under his banner.'

'We have an aristocracy of wealth,' said the dele-
gate who had chiefly spoken. 'In a progressive
civilisation, wealth is the only means of class distinc-
tion: but a new disposition of wealth may remove
even this.'

'Ah! you want to get at our estates,' said Lord
Valentine, smiling; 'but the effort on your part may
resolve society into its original elements, and the old
sources of distinction may again develop themselves.'

' Tall barons will not stand against Paixhans' rock-
ets,* said the delegate. ' Modern science has vindicated
the natural equality of man.'

'And I must say I am very sorry for it,' said the
other delegate; 'for human strength always seems to
me the natural process of settling affairs.'

328 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'\ am not surprised at your opinion,' said Lord
Valentine, turning to the delegate and smiling. 'I
should not be over-glad to meet you in a fray. You
stand some inches above six feet or I am mistaken.'

M was six feet two inches when I stopped grow-
ing,' said the delegate; *and age has not stolen any
of my height yet.*

'That suit of armour would fit you,' said Lord
Valentine, as they all rose.

'And might I ask your lordship,' said the tall del-
egate, 'why it is here?'

* I am to represent Richard Coeur de Lion at the
Queen's ball,' said Lord Valentine; 'and before my
Sovereign I will not don a Drury Lane cuirass, so I
got this up from my father's castle.'

'Ah! I almost wish the good old times of Coeur
de Lion were here again,' said the tall delegate.

'And we should be serfs,' said his companion.

'I am not sure of that,' said the tall delegate. 'At
any rate there was the free forest.'

'I like that young fellow,' said the tall delegate to
his companion, as they descended the staircase.

'He has awful prejudices,' said his friend.

'Well, well; he has his opinions, and we have
ours. But he is a man; with clear, straightforward
ideas, a frank, noble presence; and as good-looking a
fellow as I ever set eyes on. Where are we now?'

' We have only one more name on our list to-day,
and it is at hand. Letter K, No. i, Albany. Another
member of the aristocracy, the Honourable Charles
Egremont.'

'Well, 1 prefer them, so far as I can judge, to
Wriggle, and Rip, and Thorough Base,' said the tall
delegate laughing. ' I dare say we should have found

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Lord Milford a very jolly fellow, if he had only been
up.'

'Here we are,' said his companion, as he knocked.
'Mr. Egremont, is he at home?'

' The gentlemen of the deputation ? Yes, my mas-
ter gave particular orders that he was at home to you.
Will you walk in, gentlemen ? '

'There, you see,' said the tall delegate. 'This
would be a lesson to Thorough Base.'

They sat down in an antechamber; the servant
opened a mahogany folding-door which he shut after
him, and announced to his master the arrival of the
delegates. Egremont was seated in his library, at a
round table covered with writing materials, books, and
letters. On another table were arranged his parlia-
mentary papers, and piles of blue books. The room was
classically furnished. On the mantelpiece were some
ancient vases, which he had brought with him from
Italy, standing on each side of that picture of Allori
of which we have spoken.

The servant returned to the anteroom, and an-
nouncing to the delegates that his master was ready
to receive them, ushered into the presence of Egre-
mont, Walter Gerard and Stephen Morley.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Westminster Abbey.

T IS much to be deplored that our sa-
cred buildings are generally closed,
except at the stated periods of
public resort. It is still more to
/ be regretted that, when with difli-
culty entered, there is so much in

their arrangements to offend the taste and outrage
the feelings. In the tumult of life, a few minutes oc-
casionally passed in the solemn shadow of some lofty
and ancient aisle, exercise very often a salutary in-
fluence: they purify the heart and elevate the mind;
dispel many haunting fancies, and prevent many an
act which otherwise might be repented. The church
would in this light still afford us a sanctuary; not
against the power of the law but against the violence
of our own will; not against the passions of man
but against our own.

The Abbey of Westminster rises amid the strife of
factions. Around its consecrated precincts some of
the boldest and some of the worst deeds have been
achieved or perpetrated; sacrilege, rapine, murder, and
treason. Here robbery has been practised on the
greatest scale known in modern ages: here ten thou-

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sand manors, belonging to the order of the Templars,
without any proof, scarcely with a pretext, were for-
feited in one day and divided among the monarch
and his chief nobles; here the great estate of the
Church, which, whatever its articles of faith, belonged
and still belongs to the people, was seized at various
times, under various pretences, by an assembly that
continually changed the religion of their country and
their own by a parliamentary majority, but which
never refunded the booty. Here too was brought
forth that monstrous conception which even patrician
Rome in its most ruthless period never equalled, the
mortgaging of the industry of the country to enrich
and to protect property; an act which is now bring-
ing its retributive consequences in a degraded and
alienated population. Here too have the innocent
been impeached and hunted to death; and a virtuous
and able monarch martyred, because, among other
benefits projected for his people, he was of opinion
that it was more for their advantage that the eco-
nomic service of the state should be supplied by di-
rect taxation levied by an individual known to all,
than by indirect taxation, raised by an irresponsible
and fluctuating assembly. But, thanks to parliamen-
tary patriotism, the people of England were saved
from ship-money, which money the wealthy paid,
and only got in its stead the customs and excise,
which the poor mainly supply. Rightly was King
Charles surnamed the Martyr; for he was the holocaust
of direct taxation. Never yet did man lay down his
heroic life for so great a cause: the cause of the
Church and the cause of the poor.

Even now. in the quiet times in which we live, when
public robbery is out of fashion and takes the milder

332 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

title of a commission of inquiry, and when there is
no treason except voting against a Minister, who,
though he may have changed all the policy which
you have been elected to support, expects your vote
and confidence all the same; even in this age of mean
passions and petty risks, it is something to step aside
from Palace Tard, and instead of listening to a dull
debate, where the facts are only a repetition of the
blue books you have already read, and the fancy an
ingenious appeal to the recrimination of Hansard, to
enter the old Abbey and listen to an anthem!

This was a favourite habit of Egremont, and,
though the mean discipline and sordid arrangements
of the ecclesiastical body to which the guardianship
of the beautiful edifice is intrusted have certainly done
all that could injure and impair the holy genius of
the place, it still was a habit often full of charm and
consolation.

There is not perhaps another metropolitan popula-
tion in the world that would tolerate such conduct as
is pursued to 'that great lubber, the public,' by the
Dean and Chapter of Westminster, and submit in si-
lence to be shut out from the only building in the
two cities which is worthy of the name of a cathedral.
But the British public will bear anything; they are so
busy in speculating in railway shares.

When Egremont had entered on his first visit to
the Abbey by the south transept, and beheld the
boards and the spikes with which he seemed to be en-
vironed, as if the Abbey were in a state of siege; iron
gates shutting him out from the solemn nave and the
shadowy aisles; scarcely a glimpse to be caught of a
single window; while on a dirty form some noisy
vergers sat like ticket-porters or babbled like tapsters

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333

at their ease, the visions of abbatial perfection, in
which he had early and often indulged among the
ruins of Marney, rose on his outraged sense, and he
was then about hastily to retire from the scene he had
so long purposed to visit, when suddenly the organ
burst forth, a celestial symphony floated in the lofty
roof, and voices of plaintive melody blended with the
swelling sounds. He was fixed to the spot.

Perhaps it was some similar feeling that influenced
another individual on the day after the visit of the
deputation to Egremont. The sun, though in his sum-
mer heaven he had still a long course, had passed his
meridian by many hours, the service was performing
in the choir, and a few persons entering by the door
into that part of the Abbey Church which is so well
known by the name of Poets' Corner, proceeded
through the unseemly stockade which the chapter
have erected, and took their seats. One only, a fe-
male, declined to pass, notwithstanding the officious
admonitions of the vergers that she had better move
on, but approaching the iron grating that shut her
out from the body of the church, looked wistfully
down the long dim perspective of the beautiful south-
ern aisle. And thus motionless she remained in con-
templation, or it might be prayer, while the solemn
peals of the organ and the sweet voices of the choir
enjoyed that holy liberty for which she sighed, and
seemed to wander at their will in every sacred recess
and consecrated corner.

The sounds, those mystical and thrilling sounds
that at once exalt the soul and touch the heart, ceased ;
the chanting of the service recommenced; the motion-
less form moved; and as she moved Egremont came
forth from the choir, and his eye was at once caught

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

by the symmetry of her shape and the picturesque
position which she gracefully occupied; still gazing
through that grate, while the light, pouring through
the western window, suffused the body of the church
with a soft radiance, just touching the head of the
unknown with a kind of halo. Egremont approached
the transept door with a lingering pace, so that the
stranger, who he observed was preparing to leave
the church, might overtake him. As he reached the
door, anxious to assure himself that he was not mis-
taken, he turned round and his eye at once caught
the face of Sybil. He started, he trembled; she was
not two yards distant, she evidently recognized him;
he held open the swinging postern of the Abbey that
she might pass, which she did, and then stopped on
the outside, and said 'Mr. Franklin!'

It was therefore clear that her father had not
thought fit, or had not yet had an opportunity, to
communicate to Sybil the interview of yesterday.
Egremont was still Mr. Franklin. This was perplex-
ing. Egremont would have liked to be saved the
pain and awkwardness of the avowal, yet it must be
made, though not with unnecessary crudeness. And
so at present he only expressed his delight, the unex-
pected delight he experienced at their meeting. And
then he walked on by her side.

'Indeed,' said Sybil, 'I can easily imagine you
must have been surprised at seeing me in this great
city. But many things, strange and unforeseen, have
happened to us since you were at Mowedale. You
know, of course, you with your pursuits must know,
that the people have at length resolved to summon
their own Parliament in Westminster. The people of
Mowbray had to send up two delegates to the Con-

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vention, and they chose my father for one of them.
For, so great is their confidence in him, none other
would content them.'

'He must have made a great sacrifice incoming?'
said Egremont.

* Oh ! what are sacrifices in such a cause ? ' said
Sybil. 'Yes; he made great sacrifices,' she continued
earnestly; 'great sacrifices, and I am proud of them.
Our home, which was a happy home, is gone; he
has quitted the Traffords, to whom we were knit by
many, many ties,' and her voice faltered, 'and for
whom, I know well he would have perilled his life.
And now we are parted,' said Sybil, with a sigh,
' perhaps for ever. They offered to receive me under
their roof,' she continued, with emotion. ' Had I
needed shelter there was another roof which has long
awaited me; but I could not leave my father at such a
moment. He appealed to me; and I am here. All I
desire, all I live for, is to soothe and support him in
his great struggle; and I should die content if the
people were only free, and a Gerard had freed
them.'

Egremont mused: he must disclose all, yet how
embarrassing to enter into such explanations in a pub-
lic thoroughfare! Should he bid her after a while fare-
well, and then make his confession in writing? Should
he at once accompany her home, and there offer his
perplexing explanations? Or should he acknowledge
his interview of yesterday with Gerard, and then leave
the rest to the natural consequences of that acknowl-
edgment when Sybil met her father? Thus ponder-
ing, Egremont and Sybil quitting the court of the
Abbey, entered Abingdon Street.

'Let me walk home with you,' said Egremont, as

336 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Sybil seemed to intimate her intention here to sep-
arate.

'My father is not there,' said Sybil; 'but I will
not fail to tell him that I have met his old com-
panion.*

'Would he had been as frank!' thought Egre-
mont. And must he quit her in this way ? Impossible.
'You must indeed let me attend you!' he said aloud.

'It is not far,' said Sybil. 'We live almost in the
Precinct, in an old house, with some kind old peo-
ple, the brother of one of the nuns of Mowbray.
The nearest way to it is straight along this street,
but that is too bustling for me. I have discovered,'
she added with a smile, 'a more tranquil path.' And
guided by her, they turned up College Street.

'And how long have you been in London?*

'A fortnight. 'Tis a great prison. How strange
it is that, in a vast city like this, one can scarcely
walk alone!'

'You want Harold,' said Egremont. 'How is that
most faithful of friends?'

'Poor Harold! To part with him was a pang.*

'I fear your hours must be heavy,' said Egremont.

'Oh! no,' said Sybil, 'there is so much at stake;
so much to hear the moment my father returns. I
take so much interest too in their discussions; and
sometimes I go to hear him speak. None of them
can compare with him. It seems to me that it
would be impossible to resist our claims if our rulers
only heard them from his lips.'

Egremont smiled. 'Your Convention is in its
bloom, or rather its bud,' he said; 'all is fresh and
pure now; but a little while and it will find the fate
of all popular assemblies. You will have factions.'

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337

*But why?' said Sybil. *They are the real repre-
sentatives of the people, and all that the people want
is justice; that labour should be as much respected
by law and society as property.'

While they thus conversed, they passed through
several clean, still streets, that had rather the appear-
ance of streets in a very quiet country town, than of
abodes in the greatest city in the world, and in the
vicinity of palaces and parliaments. Rarely was a
shop to be remarked among the neat little tene-
ments, many of them built of curious old brick,
and all of them raised without any regard to sym-
metry or proportion. Not the sound of a single
wheel was heard; sometimes not a single indi-
vidual was visible or stirring. Making a circui-
tous course through this tranquil and orderly district,
they at last found themselves in an open place in the
centre of which rose a church of vast proportions,
and built of hewn stone in that stately, not to
say ponderous, style which Vanbrugh introduced.

The area round it, sufficiently ample, was formed
by buildings, generally of a mean character: the
long back premises of a carpenter, the straggling
yard of a hackney-man; sometimes a small, narrow
isolated private residence, like a waterspout in which
a rat might reside; sometimes a group of houses of
more pretension. In the extreme corner of this area,
which was dignified by the name of Smith's Square,
instead of taking a more appropriate title from the
church of St. John which it encircled, was a large
old house, that had been masked at the beginning of
the century with a modern front of pale-coloured
bricks, but which still stood in its courtyard sur-
rounded by its iron railings, withdrawn as it were

338 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

from the vulgar gaze like an individual who had
known higher fortunes, and blending with his humil-
ity something of the reserve which is prompted by
the memory of vanished greatness.

'This is my home,' said Sybil. *It is a still place,
and suits us well.'

Near the house was a narrow passage which was
a thoroughfare into the most populous quarter of the
neighbourhood. As Egremont was opening the gate
of the courtyard, Gerard ascended the steps of this
passage, and approached them.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

A Maker of Peers.

HEN Gerard and Morley quitted the
Albany after their visit to Egre-
mont, they separated, and Stephen,
whom we will accompany, pro-
ceeded in the direction of the
Temple, in the vicinity of which he
himself lodged, and where he was about to visit a
brother journalist, who occupied chambers in that
famous inn of court. As he passed under Temple
Bar his eye caught a portly gentleman stepping out
of a public cab, with a bundle of papers in his hand,
and immediately disappearing through that well-known
archway which Morley was on the point of reaching.
The gentleman indeed was still in sight, descending
the way, when Morley entered, who observed him
drop a letter. Morley hailed him, but in vain; and
fearing the stranger might disappear in one of the
many inextricable courts, and so lose his letter, he
ran forward, picked up the paper, and then pushed
on to the person who dropped it, calling out so fre-
quently that the stranger at length began to suspect
that he himself might be the object of the salute, and
stopped and looked round. Morley almost mechanic-
ally glanced at the outside of the letter, the seal of

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BENJAMIN DISRAELI

which was broken, and which was however addressed
to a name that immediately fixed his interest. The
direction was to 'Baptist Hatton, Esq., Inner Temple.'

'This letter is, I believe, addressed to you. Sir,'
said Morley, looking very intently upon the person to
whom he spoke, a portly man and a comely; florid,
gentleman-like, but with as little of the expression
which Morley in imagination had associated with that
Hatton over whom he once pondered, as can easily
be imagined.

*Sir, 1 am extremely obliged to you,' said the
strange gentleman; 'the letter belongs to me, though
it is not addressed to me. I must have this moment
dropped it. My name. Sir, is Firebrace, Sir Vavasour
Firebrace, and this letter is addressed to a — a — not
exactly my lawyer, but a gentleman, a professional
gentleman, whom I am in the habit of frequently see-
ing; daily, I may say. He is employed in a great
question in which I am deeply interested. Sir, I am
vastly obliged to you, and I trust that you are satis-
fied.'

'Oh! perfectly. Sir Vavasour;' and Morley bowed;
and going in different directions they separated.

'Do you happen to know a lawyer by name Hat-
ton in this inn?* inquired Morley of his friend the
journalist, when, having transacted their business, the
occasion served.

'No lawyer of that name; but the famous Hatton
lives here,' was the reply.

'The famous Hatton! And what is he famous for?
You forget 1 am a provincial.'

'He has made more peers of the realm than our
gracious Sovereign,' said the journalist. 'And since
the reform of Parliament the only chance of a

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341

Tory becoming a peer is the favour of Baptist Hatton;
though who he is no one knows, and what he is no
one can describe.'

'You speak in conundrums,' said Morley; 'I wish
I could guess them. Try to adapt yourself to my
somewhat simple capacity.'

' In a word, then,' said his friend, 'if you must
have a definition, Hatton may rank under the genus
''antiquary," though his species is more difficult to
describe. He is an heraldic antiquary; a discoverer,
inventor, framer, arranger of pedigrees; profound in
the mysteries of genealogies; an authority I believe
unrivalled in everything that concerns the constitution
and elements of the House of Lords; consulted by
lawyers, though not professing the law; and starthng
and alarming the noblest families in the country by
claiming the ancient baronies which they have often
assumed without authority, for obscure pretenders,
many of whom he has succeeded in seating in the
Parliament of his country.'

' And what part of the country did he come from; do
you happen to know ? ' inquired Morley, evidently much
interested, though he attempted to conceal his emotion.

' He may be a veritable subject of the kingdom of
Cockaigne, for aught I know,' replied his friend. ' He
has been buried in this inn I believe for years; for
very many before I settled here; and for a long time
I apprehend was sufficiently obscure, though doing,
they say, a great deal in a small way; but the Mallory
case made his fortune about ten years ago. That
was a barony by writ of summons which had been
claimed a century before, and failed. Hatton seated
his man, and the precedent enabled three or four more
gentlemen under his auspices to follow that example.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

They were Roman Catholics, which probably brought
him the Mallory case, for Hatton is of the old Church;
better than that, they were all gentlemen of great es-
tate, and there is no doubt their champion was well
rewarded for his successful service. They say he is
very rich. At present all the business of the country
connected with descents flows into his chambers. Not
a pedigree in dispute, not a peerage in abeyance, which
is not submitted to his consideration. I don't know
him personally; but you can now form some idea of
his character; and if you want to claim a peerage,'
the journalist added laughingly, 'he is your man.'

A strong impression was on the mind of Morley
that this was his man; he resolved to inquire of Ger-
ard, whom he should see in the evening, as to the
fact of their Hatton being a Catholic, and if so, to call
on the antiquary on the morrow.

In the meantime we must not forget one who is
already making that visit. Sir Vavasour Firebrace is
seated in a spacious library that looks upon the
Thames and the gardens of the Temple. Though
piles of parchments and papers cover the numerous
tables, and in many parts intrude upon the Turkey
carpet, an air of order, of comfort, and of taste, per-
vades the chamber. The hangings of crimson dam-
ask silk blend with the antique furniture of oak; the
upper panes of the windows are tinted by the brilliant
pencil of feudal Germany, while the choice volumes
that hne the shelves are clothed in bindings which
become their rare contents. The master of this apart-
ment was a man of ordinary height, inclined to cor-
pulency, and in the wane of middle life, though his
unwrinkled cheek, his undimmed blue eye, and his
brown hair, very apparent, though he wore a cap of

SYBIL

343

black velvet, did not betray his age, or the midnight
studies by which he had in a great degree acquired
that learning for which he was celebrated. The gen-
eral expression of his countenance was pleasing, though
dashed with a trait of the sinister. He was seated
in an easy chair, before a kidney table at which he
was writing. Near at hand was a long tall open
desk, on which were several folio volumes open, and
some manuscripts which denoted that he had recently
been engaged with them. At present Mr. Hatton,
with his pen still in his hand and himself in a
chamber-robe of the same material as his cap, leant
back in his chair, while he listened to his client. Sir
Vavasour. Several beautiful black-and-tan spaniels of
the breed of King Charles II. were reposing near him
on velvet cushions, with a haughty luxuriousness
which would have become the beauties of the merry
monarch; and a white Persian cat, with blue eyes, a
long tail, and a visage not altogether unlike that of
its master, was resting with great gravity on the
writing-table, and assisting at the conference.

Sir Vavasour had evidently been delivering himself
of a long narrative, to which Mr. Hatton had listened
with that imperturbable patience which characterised
him, and which was unquestionably one of the ele-
ments of his success. He never gave up anything,
and he never interrupted anybody. And now in a
silvery voice he replied to his visitor:

'What you tell me. Sir Vavasour, is what I fore-
saw, but which, as my influence could not affect it,
I dismissed from my thoughts. You came to me for
a specific object. I accomplished it. I undertook to
ascertain the rights and revive the claims of the baron-
ets of England. That was what you required of me;

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

I fulfilled your wish. Those rights are ascertained;
those claims are revived. A great majority of the
order have given in their adhesion to the organised
movement. The nation is acquainted with your de-
mands, accustomed to them, and the monarch once
favourably received them. I can do no more; I do
not pretend to make baronets, still less can I confer
on those already made the right to wear stars and
coronets, the dark green dress of Equites aurati, or
white hats with white plumes of feathers. These dis-
tinctions, even if their previous usage were established,
must flow from the gracious permission of the Crown,
and no one could expect, in an age hostile to per-
sonal distinctions, that any ministry would recommend
the Sovereign to a step which with vulgar minds
would be odious, and by malignant ones might be
rendered ridiculous.'

'Ridiculous!' said Sir Vavasour.

*A11 the world,' said Mr. Hatton, 'do not take upon
these questions the same enlightened view as our-
selves. Sir Vavasour. I never could for a moment be-
lieve that the Sovereign would consent to invest such
a numerous body of men with such privileges.'

'But you never expressed this opinion,' said Sir
Vavasour.

'You never asked for my opinion,' said Mr. Hat-
ton; 'and if I had given it, you and your friends
would not have been influenced by it. The point was
one on which you might with reason hold yourselves
as competent judges as I am. All you asked of me
was to make out your case, and I made it out. I
will venture to say a better case never left these
chambers; I do not believe there is a person in the
kingdom who could answer it except myself. They

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345

have refused the order their honours, Sir Vavasour,
but it is some consolation that they have never an-
swered their case.'

* I think it only aggravates the oppression,' said
Sir Vavasour, shaking his head; 'but cannot you ad-
vise any new step, Mr. Hatton ? After so many years
of suspense, after so much anxiety and such a vast
expenditure, it really is too bad that I and Lady Fire-
brace should be announced at court in the same style
as our fishmonger, if he happens to be a sheriff.'

M can make a peer,' said Mr. Hatton, leaning back
in his chair and playing with his seals, 'but I do not
pretend to make baronets. I can place a coronet with
four balls on a man's brow; but a coronet with two
balls is an exercise of the prerogative with which 1
do not presume to interfere.'

'I mention it in the utmost confidence,' said Sir
Vavasour, in a whisper; 'but Lady Firebrace has a
sort of promise that, in the event of a change of gov-
ernment, we shall be in the first batch of peers.'

Mr. Hatton shook his head with a slight smile of
contemptuous incredulity.

'Sir Robert,' he said, 'will make no peers; take
my word for that. The Whigs and I have so deluged
the House of Lords that you may rely upon it as a
secret of state, that if the Tories come in, there will
be no peers made. I know the Queen is sensitively
alive to the cheapening of all honours of late years.
If the Whigs go out to-morrow, mark me, they will
disappoint all their friends. Their underlings have
promised so many that treachery is inevitable, and
if they deceive some they may as well deceive all.
Perhaps they may distribute a coronet or two among
themselves; and I shall this year make three; and

346 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

those are the only additions to the peerage which
will occur for many years. You may rely on that.
For the Tories will make none, and I have some
thoughts of retiring from business.'

It is difficult to express the astonishment, the per-
plexity, the agitation, that pervaded the countenance
of Sir Vavasour while his companion thus coolly de-
livered himself. High hopes extinguished and excited
at the same moment; cherished promises vanishing,
mysterious expectations rising up; revelations of as-
tounding state secrets; chief ministers voluntarily re-
nouncing their highest means of influence, and an
obscure private individual distributing those distinc-
tions which sovereigns were obliged to hoard, and to
obtain which the first men in the country were ready
to injure their estates and to sacrifice their honour!
At length Sir Vavasour said, 'You amaze me, Mr.
Hatton. 1 could mention to you twenty members at
Boodle's, at least, who believe they will be made
peers the moment the Tories come in.'

'Not a man of them,' said Hatton peremptorily.
*Tell me one of their names, and I will tell you
whether they will be made peers.'

'Well, then, there is Mr. Tubbe Sweete, a county
member, and his son in Parliament too; I know he
has a promise.^

' I repeat to you. Sir Vavasour, the Tories will not
make a single peer; the candidates must come to me;
and I ask you what I can do for a Tubbe Sweete,
the son of a Jamaica cooper? Are there any old
families among your twenty members of Boodle's ? '

'Why, I can hardly say,' said Sir Vavasour; 'there
is Sir Charles Featherly, an old baronet.'

'The founder a Lord Mayor in James the First's

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347

reign. That is not the sort of old family that I mean,'
said Mr. Hatton.

'Well, there is Colonel Cockawhoop,' said Sir
Vavasour. * The Cockawhoops are a very good family
I have always heard.'

'Contractors of Queen Anne; partners with Marl-
borough and Solomon Medina; a very good family
indeed: but I do not make peers out of good famihes,
Sir Vavasour; old famihes are the blocks out of which
1 cut my Mercuries.'

' But what do you call an old family ? ' said Sir
Vavasour.

'Yours,' said Mr. Hatton; and he threw a full
glance on the countenance on which the hght rested.

'We were in the first batch of baronets,' said Sir
Vavasour.

'Forget the baronets for a while,' said Hatton.
'Tell me, what was your family before James 1.?'

'They always lived on their lands,' said Sir Vava-
sour. 'I have a room full of papers that would, per-
haps, tell us something about them. Would you hke
to see them ? '

'By all means; bring them all here. Not that I
want them to inform me of your rights; I am fully
acquainted with them. You would hke to be a peer.
Sir. Well, you are really Lord Vavasour, but there is
a difficulty in establishing your undoubted right from
the single writ of summons difficulty. I will not
trouble you with technicalities. Sir Vavasour; suffi-
cient that the difficulty is great, though perhaps not un-
manageable. But we have no need of management.
Your claim on the barony of Lovel is good: I could
recommend your pursuing it, did not another more in-
viting still present itself. In a word, if you wish to be

348 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Lord Bardolf, I will undertake to make you so, before,
in all probability, Sir Robert Peel obtains office; and
that, I should think, would gratify Lady Firebrace.'

'Indeed it would,' said Sir Vavasour, *for if it had
not been for this sort of a promise of a peerage made,
1 speak in great confidence, Mr. Hatton, made by
Mr. Taper, my tenants would have voted for the

Whigs the other day at the shire election, and

the Conservative candidate would have been beaten.
Lord Masque had almost arranged it, but Lady Fire-
brace would have a written promise from a high
quarter, and so it fell to the ground.'

'Well, we are' independent of all these petty ar-
rangements now,' said Mr. Hatton.

Mt is wonderful,' said Sir Vavasour, rising from
his chair and speaking, as it were, to himself. *And
what do you think our expenses will be in this claim?'
he inquired.

'Bagatelle!' said Mr. Hatton. *Why, a dozen
years ago I have known men lay out nearly half a
million in land and not get two per cent, for their
money, in order to obtain a borough influence, which
might ultimately obtain them a spick and span coro-
net; and now you are going to put one on your head
which will give you precedence over every peer on
the roll, except three; and I made those; and it will
not cost you a paltry twenty or thirty thousand
pounds. Why, I know men who would give that
for the precedence alone. Here!' and he rose and
took up some papers from a table: 'Here is a case;
a man you know, I dare say; an earl, and of a de-
cent date as earls go; George I. The first baron was
a Dutch valet of William III. Well, I am to ter-
minate an abeyance in his favour through his mother,

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349

and give him one of the baronies of the Herberts.
He buys off the other claimant, who is already en-
nobled, with a larger sum than you will expend on
your ancient coronet. Nor is that all. The other
claimant is of French descent and name; came over
at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Well, be-
sides the hush-money, my client is to defray all the
expense of attempting to transform the descendant
of the silkweaver of Lyons into the heir of a Norman
conqueror. So you see, Sir Vavasour, I am not un-
reasonable. Pah! I would sooner gain five thousand
pounds by restoring you to your rights, than fifty
thousand in establishing any of these pretenders in
their base assumptions. I must work in my craft,
Sir Vavasour, but I love the old English blood, and
have it in my veins.*

*I am satisfied, Mr. Hatton,* said Sir Vavasour;
' let no time be lost. All I regret is, that you did not
mention all this to me before; and then we might
have saved a great deal of trouble and expense.'

'You never consulted me,' said Mr. Hatton. *You
gave me your instructions, and I obeyed them. 1
was sorry to see you in that mind, for to speak
frankly, and I am sure now you will not be offended,
my lord, for such is your real dignity, there is no
title in the world for which I have such a contempt
as that of a baronet.'

Sir Vavasour winced, but the future was full of
glory and the present of excitement; and he wished
Mr. Hatton good morning, with a promise that he
would himself bring the papers on the morrow.

Mr. Hatton was buried for a few moments in a
reverie, during which he played with the tail of the
Persian cat.

CHAPTER XL.

Egremont's Secret.

E LEFT Sybil and Egremont just at
the moment that Gerard arrived at
the very threshold which they had
themselves reached.
*Ah! my father,' exclaimed Sybil,
and then with a faint blush, of which
she was perhaps unconscious, she added, as if appre-
hensive Gerard would not recall his old companion,
'you remember Mr. Franklin?'

' This gentleman and myself had the pleasure of
meeting yesterday,' said Gerard, embarrassed, while
Egremont himself changed colour and was infinitely
confused. Sybil felt surprised that her father should
have met Mr. Franklin and not have mentioned a cir-
cumstance naturally interesting to her. Egremont was
about to speak when the street-door was opened.
And were they to part again, and no explanation.^
And was Sybil to be left with her father, who was
evidently in no haste, perhaps had no great tendency,
to give that explanation? Every feeling of an ingen-
uous spirit urged Egremont personally to terminate
this prolonged misconception.

*You will permit me, I hope,' he said, appealing
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SYBIL

3SI

as much to Gerard as to his daughter, 'to enter with
you for a few moments.'

It was not possible to resist such a request, yet it
was conceded on the part of Gerard with no cor-
diality. So they entered the large gloomy hall of the
house, and towards the end of a long passage Gerard
opened a door, and they all went into a spacious
melancholy room, situate at the back of the house,
and looking upon a small square plot of dank grass,
in the midst of which rose a weather-stained Cupid,
with one arm broken, and the other raised in the air,
with a long shell to its mouth. It seemed that in
old days it might have been a fountain. At the end
of the plot, the blind side of a house offered a high
wall which had once been painted in fresco. Though
much of the coloured plaster had cracked and peeled
away, and all that remained was stained and faded,
still some traces of the original design might yet be
detected: festive wreaths, the colonnades and perspective
of a palace.

The walls of the room itself were wainscoted in
panels of dark-stained wood; the window-curtains
were of coarse green worsted, and encrusted by dust
so ancient and irremovable, that it presented almost
a lava-Hke appearance; the carpet, that had once been
bright and showy, was entirely threadbare, and had
become grey with age. There were several heavy
mahogany arm-chairs in the room, a Pembroke table,
and an immense unwieldy sideboard, garnished with
a few wine-glasses of a deep blue colour. Over the
lofty uncouth mantel was a portrait of the Marquis of
Granby, which might have been a sign, and opposite
to him, over the sideboard, was a large tawdry-col-
oured print, by Bunbury, of Ranelagh in its most

352 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

festive hour. The general appearance of the room,
however, though dingy, was not squalid; and what
with its spaciousness, its extreme repose, and the as-
sociations raised by such few images as it did sug-
gest, the impression on the mind of the spectator
was far from unpleasing, partaking indeed of that
vague melancholy which springs from the contempla-
tion of the past, and which at all times softens the
spirit.

Gerard walked to the window and looked at the
grass-plot; Sybil seating herself, invited their guest to
follow her example; Egremont, not without agitation,
seemed suddenly to make an effort to collect himself,
and then, in a voice not distinguished by its accus-
tomed clearness, he said, M explained yesterday to
one whom, I hope, I may still call my friend, why I
assumed a name to which I have no right.'

Sybil started a little, slightly stared, but did not
speak.

'1 should be happy if you also would give me
credit, in taking that step, at least for motives of
which I need not be ashamed; even,' he added in a
hesitating voice, 'even if you deemed my conduct in-
discreet.'

Their eyes met: astonishment was imprinted on
the countenance of Sybil, but she uttered not a word;
and her father, whose back was turned to them, did
not move.

'I was told,' continued Egremont, *that an impass-
able gulf divided the rich from the poor; 1 was told
that the privileged and the people formed two na-
tions, governed by different laws, influenced by differ-
ent manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in
common; with an innate inability of mutual compre-

SYBIL

353

hension. I believed that if this were indeed the case,
the ruin of our common country was at hand; I
would have endeavoured, feebly perchance, but not
without zeal, to resist such a catastrophe; I possessed
a station which entailed on me some portion of its
responsibility; to obtain that knowledge which could
alone qualify me for beneficial action, I resolved to
live without suspicion among my fellow-subjects who
were estranged from me; even void of all celebrity as
I am, I could not have done that without suspicion,
had I been known; they would have recoiled from
my class and my name, as you yourself recoiled,
Sybil, when they were once accidentally mentioned
before you. These are the reasons, these the feelings,
which impelled, I will not say justified, me to pass
your threshold under a feigned name. I entreat you
to judge kindly of my conduct; to pardon me; and
not to make me feel the bitterness that I have for-
feited the good opinion of one for whom under all
circumstances and in all situations, I must ever feel
the highest conceivable respect, I would say a rever-
ential regard.'

His tones of passionate emotion ceased. Sybil,
with a countenance beautiful and disturbed, gazed at
him for an instant, and seemed about to speak, but
her trembling lips refused the office; then with an
effort, turning to Gerard, she said, 'My father, I am
amazed; tell me, then, who is this gentleman who
addresses me ? '

*The brother of Lord Marney, Sybil,' said Gerard,
turning to her.

'The brother of Lord Marney!' repeated Sybil, with
an air almost of stupor.

*Yes/ said Egremont; 'a member of that family of

14 B. D.— 23

354 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

sacrilege, of those oppressors of the people, whom
you have denounced to me with such withering
scorn.'

The elbow of Sybil rested on the arm of her chair,
and her cheek upon her hand; as Egremont said these
words she shaded her face, which was thus entirely
unseen: for some moments there was silence. Then
looking up with an expression grave but serene, and
as if she had just emerged from some deep thinking,
Sybil said, *1 am sorry for my words; sorry for the
pain 1 unconsciously gave you; sorry indeed for all
that has passed; and that my father has lost a pleas-
ant friend.'

'And why should he be lost?' said Egremont
mournfully, and yet with tenderness. 'Why should
we not still be friends?'

*Oh, sir!' said Sybil, haughtily; *I am one of
those who believe the gulf is impassable. Yes,' she
added, slightly but with singular grace waving her
hands, and somewhat turning away her head, * utterly
impassable.'

There are tumults of the mind, when, like the
great convulsions of nature, all seems anarchy and re-
turning chaos, yet often, in those moments of vast
disturbance, as in the material strife itself, some new
principle of order, or some new impulse of conduct,
develops itself, and controls, and regulates, and brings
to an harmonious consequence, passions and elements
which seemed only to threaten despair and subver-
sion. So it was with Egremont. He looked for a
moment in despair upon this maiden, walled out
from sympathy by prejudices and convictions more
impassable than all the mere consequences of class.
He looked for a moment, but only for a moment, in

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355

despair. He found in his tortured spirit energies that
responded to the exigency of the occasion. Even the
otherwise embarrassing presence of Gerard would not
have prevented — but just at this moment the door
opened, and Morley and another person entered the
room.

CHAPTER XLI.

More Secrets.

ORLEY paused as he recognised Egre-
mont; then advancing to Gerard,
followed by his companion, he said,
'This is Mr. Hatton of whom we
were speaking last night, and who
claims to be an ancient acquaint-
ance of yours.'

* Perhaps 1 should rather say of your poor dear
father,' said Hatton, scanning Gerard with his clear
blue eye; and then he added, 'He was of great serv-
ice to me in my youth, and one is not apt to forget
such things.'

'One ought not,' said Gerard; 'but it is a sort of
memory, as I have understood, that is rather rare.
For my part I remember you very well, Baptist Hat-
ton,' said Gerard, examining his guest with almost as
complete a scrutiny as he had himself experienced.
'The world has gone well with you, I am glad to
hear and see.'

'Qui labor aty or at,' said Hatton in a silvery voice,
'is the gracious maxim of our Holy Church; and I
venture to believe my prayers and vigils have been
accepted, for I have laboured in my time;' and as he
(356)

SYBIL

357

was speaking these words, he turned and addressed
them to Sybil.

She beheld him with no little interest; this mys-
terious name that had sounded so often in her young
ears, and was associated with so many strange and
high hopes, and some dark blending of doubt and
apprehension, and discordant thoughts. Hatton in his
appearance realised little of the fancies in which Sybil
had sometimes indulged with regard to him. That
appearance was prepossessing: a frank and even
benevolent expression played upon his intelligent and
handsome countenance; his once rich brown hair,
still long, though thin, was so arranged as naturally
to conceal his baldness; he was dressed with great
simplicity, but with remarkable taste and care; nor
did the repose and suavity of his manner and the
hushed tone of his voice detract from the favourable
effect that he always at once produced.

'Qui labor at, or at/ said Sybil with a smile, *is the
privilege of the people.'

'Of whom I am one,' said Hatton, bowing, well
recollecting that he was addressing the daughter of a
Chartist delegate.

'But is your labour, their labour?' said Sybil. Ms
yours that life of uncomplaining toil wherein there is
so much of beauty and of goodness, that, by the fine
maxim of our Church, it is held to include the force
and efficacy of prayer?'

'I am sure that 1 should complain of no toil that
would benefit you,' said Hatton; and then addressing
himself again to Gerard, he led him to a distant part
of the room where they were soon engaged in earnest
converse. Morley at the same moment approached
Sybil, and spoke to her in a subdued tone. Egremont,

358 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

feeling embarrassed, advanced and bade her farewell.
She rose and returned his salute with some ceremony;
then hesitating, while a soft expression came over her
countenance, she held forth her hand, which he re-
tained for a moment, and withdrew.

*I was with him more than an hour,' continued
Morley. *At first he recollected nothing; even the
name of Gerard, though he received it as familiar to
him, seemed to produce little impression; he recol-
lected nothing of any papers; was clear that they must
have been quite insignificant; whatever they were, he
doubtless had them now, as he never destroyed
papers; would order a search to be made for them,
and so on. I was about to withdraw, when he
asked me carelessly a question about your father;
what he was doing, and whether he were married,
and had children. This led to a long conversation,
in which he suddenly seemed to take great interest.
At first he talked of writing to see your father, and I
offered that Gerard should call upon him. He took
down your direction, in order that he might write to
your father, and give him an appointment; when, ob-
serving that it was Westminster, he said that his
carriage was ordered to go to the House of Lords in
a quarter of an hour, and that, if not inconvenient to
me, he would propose that I should at once accom-
pany him. I thought, whatever might be the resuh,
it must be a satisfaction to Gerard at last to see this
man, of whom he has talked and thought so much;
and so we are here.'

'You did well, good Stephen, as you always do,'
said Sybil with a musing and abstracted air; *no
one has so much forethought, and so much energy
as you.'

SYBIL

359

He threw a glance at her; and immediately with-
drew it. Their eyes had met: hers were kind and calm.

'And this Egremont,' said Morley rather hurriedly
and abruptly, and looking on the ground, ' how came
he here ? When we discovered him yesterday, your
father and myself agreed that we should not mention
to you the — the mystification of which we had been
dupes.*

'And you did wrong,' said Sybil. 'There is no
wisdom like frankness. Had you told me, he would
not have been here to-day. He met and addressed
me, and I only recognised an acquaintance who had
once contributed so much to the pleasantness of our
life. Had he not accompanied me to this door and
met my father, which precipitated an explanation on
his part which he found had not been given by others,
1 might have remained in an ignorance which here-
after might have produced inconvenience.'

'You are right,' said Morley looking at her rather
keenly. 'We have all of us opened ourselves too
unreservedly before this aristocrat.'

'I should hope that none of us have said to him a
word that we wish to be forgotten,' said Sybil. 'He
chose to wear a disguise, and can hardly quarrel with
the frankness with which we spoke of his order or
his family. And for the rest, he has not been injured
from learning something of the feelings of the people
by living among them.'

'And yet if anything were to happen to-morrow,'
said Morley, 'rest assured this man has his eye on
us. He can walk into the government offices like
themselves and tell his tale, for, though one of the
pseudo-opposition, the moment the people move, the
factions become united.'

36o BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Sybil turned and looked at him, and then said,
'And what could happen to-morrow, that we should
care for the government being acquainted with it or
us? Do not they know everything? Do not you
meet in their very sight? You pursue an avowed
and legal aim by legal means, do you not? AVhat
then is there to fear? And why should anything
happen that should make us apprehensive ? *

'All is very well at this moment,' said Morley,
'and all may continue well; but popular assemblies
breed turbulent spirits, Sybil. Your father takes a
leading part; he is a great orator, and is in his ele-
ment in this clamorous and fiery life. It does not
much suit me; 1 am a man of the closet. This con-
vention, as you well know, was never much to my
taste. Their Charter is a coarse specific for our social
evils. The spirit that would cure our ills must be of
a deeper and finer mood.'

' Then why are you here ? ' said Sybil.

Morley shrugged his shoulders, and then said, ' An
easy question. Questions are always easy. The fact
is, in active life one cannot afford to refine. I could
have wished the movement to have taken a different
shape, and to have worked for a different end; but
it has not done this. But it is still a movement and
a great one, and I must work it for my end and try
to shape it to my form. If I had refused to be a
leader, I should not have prevented the movement; I
should only have secured my own insignificance.'

'But my father has not these fears; he is full of
hope and exultation,' said Sybil. 'And surely it is a
great thing that the people have their Parliament law-
fully meeting in open day, and their delegates from the
whole realm declaring their grievances in language

SYBIL

361

which would not disgrace the conquering race which
has in vain endeavoured to degrade them. When I
heard my father speak the other night, my heart
glowed with emotion; my eyes were suffused with
tears; I was proud to be his daughter; and I gloried
in a race of forefathers who belonged to the oppressed
and not to the oppressors.'

Morley watched the deep splendour of her eye and
the mantling of her radiant cheek, as she spoke these
latter words with not merely animation but fervour.
Her bright hair, that hung on either side her face in
long tresses of luxuriant richness, was drawn off a
forehead that was the very throne of thought and
majesty, while her rich lip still quivered with the
sensibility which expressed its impassioned truth.

'But your father, Sybil, stands alone,' at length
Morley replied; 'surrounded by votaries who have
nothing but enthusiasm to recommend them; and by
emulous and intriguing rivals, who watch every word
and action, in order that they may discredit his con-
duct, and ultimately secure his downfall.'

'My father's downfall! ' said Sybil. 'Is he not one
of themselves? And is it possible, that among the
delegates of the people there can be other than one
and the same object?'

'A thousand,' said Morley; 'we have already as
many parties as in St. Stephen's itself.'

'You terrify me,' said Sybil. 'I knew we had fear-
ful odds to combat against. My visit to this city
alone has taught me how strong are our enemies.
But I believed that we had on our side God and
truth.'

'They know neither of them in the National Con-
vention,' said Morley. 'Our career will be a vulgar

362 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

caricature of the bad passions and the low intrigues,
the factions and the failures, of our oppressors.'

At this moment Gerard and Hatton, who were sit-
ting in the remote part of the room, rose together
and came forward; and this movement interrupted the
conversation of Sybil and Morley. Before, however,
her father and his new friend could reach them. Hat-
ton, as if some point on which he had not been suffi-
ciently explicit had occurred to him, stopped, and
placing his hand on Gerard's arm, withdrew him
again, saying in a voice which could be heard only
by the individual whom he addressed, 'You under-
stand; I have not the slightest doubt myself of your
moral right: I believe that on every principle of jus-
tice, Mowbray Castle is as much yours as the house
that is built by the tenant on the lord's land: but can
we prove it ? We never had the legal evidence. You
are in error in supposing that these papers were of
any vital consequence: mere memoranda; very useful,
no doubt, I hope I shall find them, but of no validity.
If money were the only difficulty, trust me, it should
not be wanting; I owe much to the memory of your
father, my good Gerard; 1 would fain serve you and
your daughter. I'll not tell you what 1 would do for
you, my good Gerard. You would think me foolish;
but I am alone in the world, and seeing you again
and talking of old times — I really am scarcely fit for
business. Go, however, I must; 1 have an appoint-
ment at the House of Lords. Good-bye. I must say
farewell to the Lady Sybil.'

CHAPTER XLII.

A Glorious Vision.'

OU can't have that table, sir, it is
engaged,' said a waiter at the
Athenaeum to a member of the
club who seemed unmindful of
the type of appropriation which,
in the shape of an inverted plate,
ought to have warned him off the coveted premises.

'It is always engaged,' grumbled the member.
* Who has taken it ? '
'Mr. Hatton, sir.'

And indeed at this very moment, it being about
eight o'clock of the same day on which the meeting
detailed in the last chapter had occurred, a handsome
dark brougham with a beautiful horse was stopping
in Waterloo Place before the portico of the Athenaeum
Club-house, from which equipage immediately emerged
the prosperous person of Baptist Hatton.

This club was Hatton's only relaxation. He had
never entered society; and now his habits were so
formed that the effort would have been a painful
one; though, with a first-rate reputation in his call-
ing, and supposed to be rich, the openings were nu-
merous to a famihar intercourse with those middle-

(363)

364 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

aged nameless gentlemen of easy circumstances who
haunt clubs, and dine a great deal at each other's
houses and chambers; men who travel regularly a
little, and gossip regularly a great deal; Who lead a
sort of facile, slipshod existence, doing nothing, yet
mightily interested in what others do; great critics of
little things; profuse in minor luxuries, and inchned
to the respectable practice of a decorous profligacy;
peering through the window of a club-house as if
they were discovering a planet; and usually much ex-
cited about things with which they have no concern,
and personages who never heard of them.

All this was not in Hatton's way, who was free
from all pretension, and who had acquired, from his
severe habits of historical research, a respect only for
what was authentic. These nonentities flitted about
him, and he shrunk from an existence that seemed
to him at once dull and trifling. He had a few liter-
ary acquaintances that he had made at the Antiquarian
Society, of which he was a distinguished member; a
vice-president of that body had introduced him to
the Athenaeum. It was the first and only club that
Hatton had ever belonged to, and he delighted in it.
He liked splendour and the light and bustle of a
great establishment. They saved him from that mel-
ancholy which after a day of action is the doom of
energetic celibacy. A luxurious dinner, without
trouble, suited him after his exhaustion; sipping his
claret, he revolved his plans. Above all, he revelled
in the magnificent library, and perhaps was never
happier than when, after a stimulating repast, he ad-
journed up stairs, and buried himself in an easy chair
with Dugdale, or Selden, or an erudite treatise on
forfeiture or abeyance.

SYBIL

365

To-day, however, Hatton was not in this mood.
He came in exhausted and excited: ate rapidly and
rather ravenously; despatched a pint of champagne;
and then called for a bottle of Lafitte. His table
cleared, a devilled biscuit placed before him, a cool
bottle and a fresh glass, he indulged in that reverie
which the tumult of his feelings and the physical re-
quirements of existence had hitherto combined to
prevent.

* A strange day,' he thought as, with an abstracted
air, he filled his glass, and sipping the wine, leant
back in his chair. ' The son of Walter Gerard ! A
Chartist delegate! The best blood in England! What
would I not be, were it mine!

* Those infernal papers! They made my fortune;
and yet, I know not how it is, the deed has cost me
many a pang. Yet it seemed innoxious; the old man
dead, insolvent; myself starving; his son ignorant of
all, to whom too they could be of no use, for it re-
quired thousands to work them, and even with thou-
sands they could only be worked by myself. Had I
not done it, I should ere this probably have been
swept from the surface of the earth, worn out with
penury, disease, and heart-ache. And now I am
Baptist Hatton, with a fortune almost large enough to
buy Mowbray itself, and with knowledge that can
make the proudest tremble.

'And for what object all this wealth and power.?
What memory shall I leave? What family shall 1
found? Not a relative in the world, except a solitary
barbarian, from whom, when years ago I visited him
as a stranger, I recoiled with unutterable loathing.

*Ah! had I a child: a child like the beautiful
daughter of Gerard ! '

366 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

And here mechanically Hatton filled his glass, and
quaffed at once a bumper.

*And I have deprived her of a principality! That
seraphic being, whose lustre even now haunts my
vision; the ring of whose silver tone even now lin-
gers in my ear. He must be a fiend who could
injure her. 1 am that fiend. Let me see; let me
see I '

And now he seemed wrapped in the very paradise
of some creative vision; still he filled the glass, but
this time he only sipped it, as if he were afraid to
disturb the clustering images around him.

'Let me see; let me see. 1 could make her a
baroness. Gerard is as much Baron Valence as
Shrewsbury is Talbot. Her name is Sybil. Curious
how, even when peasants, the good blood keeps the
good old family names! The Valences were ever
Sybils.

'I could make her a baroness. Yes! and I could
give her wherewith to endow her state. I could com-
pensate for the broad lands which should be hers, and
which perhaps through me she has forfeited.

'Could 1 do more? Could I restore her to the
rank she would honour, assuage these sharp pangs of
conscience, and achieve the secret ambition of my
life? What if my son were to be Lord Valence?

'Is it too bold? A Chartist delegate; a peasant's
daughter! With all that shining beauty that I wit-
nessed, with all the marvellous gifts that their friend
Morley so descanted on, would she shrink from me?
I'm not a crook-backed Richard.

*I could proffer much: I feel I could urge it
plausibly. She must be very wretched. With such
a form, such high imaginings, such thoughts of power

SYBIL

367

and pomp as I could breathe in her, I think she'd
melt. And to one of her own faith, too! To build
up a great Catholic house again; of the old blood, and
the old names, and the old faith: by holy Mary, it is
a glorious vision!'

CHAPTER XLIII.

Intrigues.

N THE evening of the day that
Egremont had met Sybil in the
Abbey of Westminster, and subse-
quently parted from her under cir-
cumstances so distressing, the
Countess of Marney held a great
assembly at the family mansion in St. James' Square,
which Lord Marney intended to have let to a new club,
and himself and his family to have taken refuge for a
short season at an hotel; but he drove so hard a bar-
gain that, before the lease was signed, the new club,
which mainly consisted of an ingenious individual
who had created himself secretary, had vanished.
Then it was agreed that the family mansion should be
inhabited for the season by the family; and to-night
Arabella was receiving all that great world of which
she herself was a distinguished ornament.

*We come to you as early as possible, my dear
Arabella,' said Lady Deloraine to her daughter-in-
law.

* You are always so good ! Have you seen Charles ?
I was in hopes he would have come,' Lady Marney
added, in a somewhat mournful tone,
(368)

SYBIL

369

'He is at the House; otherwise I am sure he
would have been here/ said Lady Deloraine, glad
that she had so good a reason for an absence which
under any circumstances she well knew would have
occurred.

M fear you will be sadly in want of beaus this
evening, my love. We dined at the Duke of Fitz-
Aquitaine's, and all our cavaliers vanished. They talk
of an early division.'

*I really wish all these divisions were over,' said
Lady Marney. 'They are very anti-social. Ah! here
is Lady de Mowbray.'

Alfred Mountchesney hovered round Lady Joan
Fitz-Warene, who was gratified by the devotion of
the Cupid of May Fair. He uttered inconceivable
nothings, and she replied to him in incomprehensible
somethings. Her learned profundity and his vapid
lightness effectively contrasted. Occasionally he caught
her eye, and conveyed to her the anguish of his soul
in a glance of self-complacent softness.

Lady St. Julians, leaning on the arm of the Duke
of Fitz-Aquitaine, stopped to speak to Lady Joan.
Lady St. Julians was determined that the heiress of
Mowbray should marry one of her sons. She watched,
therefore, with a restless eye all those who attempted
to monopolise Lady Joan's attention, and contrived
perpetually to interfere with their manoeuvres. In the
midst of a delightful conversation that seemed to ap-
proach a crisis, Lady St. Julians was sure to advance,
and interfere with some affectionate appeal to Lady
Joan, whom she called her 'dear child' and 'sweetest
love,' while she did not deign even to notice the un-
happy cavalier whom she had thus as it were un-
horsed.

14 B. D.— 24

370 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'My sweet child!' said Lady St. Julians to Lady
Joan, 'You have no idea how unhappy Frederick is
this evening, but he cannot leave the House, and I
fear it will be a late affair.'

Lady Joan looked as if the absence or presence of
Frederick was to her a matter of great indifference,
and then she added, *1 do not think the division so
important as is generally imagined. A defeat upon a
question of colonial government does not appear to
me of sufficient weight to dissolve a cabinet.'

'Any defeat will do that now,' said Lady St.
Julians, 'but to tell you the truth 1 am not very san-
guine. Lady Deloraine says they will be beat: she
says the Radicals will desert them; but 1 am not so
sure. Why should the Radicals desert them ? And
what have we done for the Radicals? Had we in-
deed foreseen this Jamaica business, and asked some
of them to dinner, or given a ball or two to their
wives and daughters! I am sure if I had had the
least idea that we had so good a chance of coming
in, I should not have cared myself to have done
something; even to have invited their women.*

'But you are such a capital partisan. Lady St.
Julians,' said the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, who, with
the viceroyalty of Ireland dexterously dangled before
his eyes for the last two years, had become a thor-
ough Conservative, and had almost as much confi-
dence in Sir Robert as in Lord Stanley.

'I have made great sacrifices,' said Lady St. Ju-
lians. 'I went once and stayed a week at Lady Jenny
Spinner's to gain her looby of a son and his eighty
thousand a year, and Lord St. Julians proposed him
at White's; and then, after all, the Whigs made him
a peer! They certainly make more of their social in-

SYBIL

371

fluences than we do. That affair of that Mr. Trench-
ard was a blow. Losing a vote at such a critical
time, when, if I had only a remote idea of what was
passing through his mind, I would have even asked
him to Barrowley for a couple of days.'

A foreign diplomatist of distinction had pinned Lord
Marney, and was dexterously pumping him as to the
probable future.

'But is the pear ripe?' said the diplomatist.

'The pear is ripe, if we have courage to pluck it,'
said Lord Marney; 'but our fellows have no pluck.'

'But do you think that the Duke of Welling-
ton ' and here the diplomatist stopped and looked

up in Lord Marney's face, as if he would convey
something that he would not venture to express.

'Here he is,' said Lord Marney, 'he will answer
the question himself, *

Lord Deloraine and Mr. Ormsby passed by; the
diplomatist addressed them; 'You have not been to
the Chamber?'

'No,' said Lord Deloraine; 'but I hear there is hot
work. It will be late.'

'Do you think ,' said the diplomatist, and he

looked up in the face of Lord Deloraine.

'I think that in the long run everything will have
an end,' said Lord Deloraine.

'Ah!' said the diplomatist.

' Bah ! ' said Lord Deloraine as he walked away with
Mr. Ormsby. 'I remember that fellow: a sort of
equivocal attache at Paris, when we were with Mon-
mouth at the peace: and now he is a quasi ambas-
sador, and ribboned and starred to the chin.'

'The only stars I have got,' said Mr. Ormsby,
demurely, 'are four stars in India stock.'

372 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Lady Firebrace and Lady Maud Fitz-Warene were
announced; they had just come from the Commons:
a dame and damsel full of political enthusiasm. Lady
Firebrace gave critical reports and disseminated many
contradictory estimates of the result; Lady Maud
talked only of a speech made by Lord Milford, which
from the elaborate noise she made about it, you
would have supposed to have been the oration of the
evening; on the contrary, it had lasted only a few
minutes, and in a thin house had been nearly inau-
dible; but then, as Lady Maud added, 'it was in
such good taste!'

Alfred Mountchesney and Lady Joan Fitz-Warene
passed Lady Marney, who was speaking to Lord De-
loraine. 'Do you think,* said Lady Marney, 'that
Mr. Mountchesney will bear away the prize?*

Lord Deloraine shook his head. 'These great
heiresses can never make up their minds. The bitter
drop rises in all their reveries.'

'And yet,' said Lady Marney, 'I would just as
soon be married for my money as my face.'

Soon after this, there was a stir in the saloons; a
murmur, the ingress of many gentlemen; among
others Lord Valentine, Lord Milford, Mr. Egerton, Mr.
Berners, Lord Fitz-Heron, Mr. Jermyn. The House
was up; the great Jamaica division was announced;
the Radicals had thrown over the Government, who,
left in a majority of only five, had already intimated
their sense of the unequivocal feeling of the House with
respect to them. It was known that on the morrow
the government would resign.

Lady Deloraine, prepared for the great result, was
calm: Lady St. Julians, who had not anticipated it,
was in a wild flutter of distracted triumph. A vague

SYBIL

373

yet dreadful sensation came over her, in the midst of
her joy, that Lady Deloraine had been beforehand
with her; had made her combinations with the new
Minister; perhaps even sounded the Court. At the
same time that in this agitating vision, the great
offices of the palace which she had apportioned to
herself and her husband seemed to elude her grasp,
the claims and hopes and interests of her various
children haunted her perplexed consciousness. What
if Charles Egremont were to get the place which she
had projected for Frederick or Augustus? What if
Lord Marney became Master of the Horse? Or Lord
Deloraine went again to Ireland? In her nervous ex-
citement she credited all these catastrophes: seized
upon 'the Duke' in order that Lady Deloraine might
not gain his ear, and resolved to get home as soon
as possible, in order that she might write without a
moment's loss of time to Sir Robert.

'They will hardly go out without making some
peers,' said Sir Vavasour Firebrace to Mr. Jermyn.

'Why, they have made enough.'

' Hem ! I know Tubbe Sweete has a promise, and
so has Cockawhoop. 1 don't think Cockawhoop could
show again at Boodle's without a coronet.'

'I do not see why these fellows should go out,'
said Mr. Ormsby. 'What does it signify whether
ministers have a majority of five, or ten or twenty?
In my time, a proper majority was a third of the
House. That was Lord Liverpool's majority. Lord
Monmouth used to say, that there were ten families
in this country, who, if they could only agree, could
always share the government. Ah! those were the
good old times! We never had adjourned debates
then; but sat it out like gentlemen who had been

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

used all their lives to be up all night, and then supped
at Watier's afterwards.'

'Ah! my dear Ormsby,' said Mr. Berners, *do not
mention Watier's; you make my mouth water.'

'Shall you stand for Birmingham, Ormsby, if there
be a dissolution?' said Lord Fitz-Heron.

*I have been asked,' said Mr. Ormsby: 'but the
House of Commons is not the House of Commons of
my time, and I have no wish to re-enter it. If I had
a taste for business, I might be a member of the
Marylebone vestry.'

'All I repeat,' said Lord Marney to his mother, as
he rose from the sofa where he had been some time
in conversation with her, 'is that if there be any idea
that I wish Lady Marney should be a lady-in-waiting,
it is an error. Lady Deloraine. I wish that to be
understood. I am a domestic man, and I wish Lady
Marney to be always with me; and what I want, 1
want for myself. I hope in arranging the Household
the domestic character of every member of it will be
considered. After all that has occurred, the country
expects that.'

' But my dear George, I think it is really pre-
mature '

'I dare say it is; but I recommend you, my dear
mother, to be alive. I heard Lady St. Julians just
now in the supper room asking the Duke to promise
her that her Augustus should be a Lord of the Ad-
miralty. She said the Treasury would not do, as
there was no house, and that with such a fortune as
his wife brought him he could not hire a house under
a thousand a year.'

'He will not have the Admiralty,' said Lady De-
loraine.

SYBIL

375

'She looks herself to the Robes.'
'Poor woman!' said Lady Deloraine.
* Is it quite true ? ' said a great Whig dame, to Mr.
Egerton, one of her own party.
'Quite,' he said.

M can endure anything except Lady St. Julians'
glance of triumph,' said the Whig dame. *I really
think, if it were only to ease her Majesty from such
an infliction, they ought to have held on.'

'And must the Household be changed?' said Mr.
Egerton.

'Do not look so serious,' said the Whig dame,
smiling with fascination; 'we are surrounded by the
enemy.'

'Will you be at home to-morrow early?' said Mr.
Egerton.

'As early as you please.'

'Very well, we will talk then. Lady Charlotte
has heard something: nous verrons.'

'Courage; we have the Court with us, and the
country cares for nothing.'

CHAPTER XLIV.
The Flattering Tongue of Hope.

IS all right,' said Mr. Tadpole.
'They are out. Lord Melbourne
has been with the Queen, and rec-
ommended her Majesty to send
for the Duke, and the Duke has
recommended her Majesty to send
for Sir Robert.'

'Are you sure?' said Mr. Taper.
'\ tell you Sir Robert is on his road to the palace
at this moment; I saw him pass, full dressed.'
Mt is too much,' said Mr. Taper.
'Now what are we to do?' said Mr. Tadpole.
*We must not dissolve,' said Mr. Taper. *We
have no cry.'

*As much cry as the other fellows,' said Mr. Tad-
pole; 'but no one of course would think of dissolu-
tion before the next registration. No, no; this is a
very manageable Parliament, depend upon it. The
malcontent Radicals who have turned them out are not
going to bring them in. That makes us equal. Then
we have an important section to work upon: the
sneaks, the men who are afraid of a dissolution. I
will be bound we make a good working Conservative
majority of five-and-twenty out of the sneaks.'
(376)

SYBIL

377

'With the Treasury patronage/ said Mr. Taper;
*fear and favour combined. An impending dissolu-
tion, and all the places we refuse our own men, we
may count on the sneaks.'

'Then there are several religious men who have
wanted an excuse for a long time to rat,' said Mr.
Tadpole. *We must get Sir Robert to make some
kind of a religious move, and that will secure Sir
Litany Lax, and young Mr. Salem.'

Mt will never do to throw over the Church Com-
mission,' said Mr. Taper. 'Commissions and com-
mittees ought always to be supported.'

'Besides, it will frighten the saints,' said Mr. Tad-
pole. * If we could get him to speak at Exeter Hall,
were it only a slavery meeting, that would do.'

'It is difficult,' said Taper; 'he must be pledged
to nothing; not even to the right of search. Yet if
we could get up something with a good deal of
sentiment, and no principle involved; referring only
to the past, but with his practised powers touching
the present. What do you think of a monument to
Wilberforce, or a commemoration of Clarkson?'

'There is a good deal in that,' said Mr. Tadpole.
'At present go about and keep our fellows in good
humour. Whisper nothings that sound like some-
thing. But be discreet; do not let there be more
than half a hundred fellows who believe they are
going to be under-Secretaries of State. And be cau-
tious about titles. If they push you, give a wink,
and press your finger to your lip. I must call here,'
continued Mr. Tadpole, as he stopped before the
house of the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine. 'This gentle-
man is my particular charge. 1 have been cooking
him these three years. 1 had two notes from him

378 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

yesterday, and can delay a visit no longer. The worst
of it is, he expects that 1 shall bear him the non-official
announcement of his being sent to Ireland, of which
he has about as much chance as I have of being
Governor-General of India. It must be confessed,
ours is critical work sometimes, friend Taper; but
never mind, what we have to do to individuals. Peel
has to do with a nation, and therefore we ought not
to complain.'

The Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine wanted Ireland, and
Lord de Mowbray wanted the Garter. Lord Marney,
who wanted the Buckhounds, was convinced that
neither of his friends had the slightest chance of ob-
taining their respective objects, but believed that he
had a very good one of securing his own if he used
them for his purpose, and persuaded them to combine
together for the common good. So at his suggestion
they had all met together at the duke's, and were in
full conference on the present state of affairs, while
Tadpole and Taper were engaged in that interesting
and instructive conversation of which we have
snatched a passage.

*You may depend upon it,' said Lord Marney,
'that nothing is to be done by delicacy. It is not
delicacy that rules the House of Lords. What has
kept us silent for years? Threats; and threats used
in the most downright manner. We were told that
if we did not conform absolutely, and without appeal,
to the will and pleasure of one individual, the cards
would be thrown up. We gave in; the game has
been played, and won. I am not at all clear that it
has been won by those tactics, but gained it is; and
now what shall we do? In my opinion it is high time
to get rid of the dictatorship. The new ruse now for

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379

the palace is to persuade her Majesty that Peel is the
only man who can manage the House of Lords.
Well, then, it is exactly the time to make certain
persons understand that the House of Lords are not
going to be tools any longer merely for other people.
Rely upon it, a bold united front at this moment
would be a spoke in the wheel. We three form the
nucleus; there are plenty to gather round. I have
written to Marisforde; he is quite ripe. Lord Houn-
slow will be here to-morrow. The thing is to be
done; and if we are not firm the grand Conservative
triumph will only end in securing the best posts both
at home and abroad for one too powerful family.'

*Who had never been heard of in the time of my
father,' said the duke.

'Nor in the time of mine,' said Lord de Mow-
bray.

* Royal and Norman blood like ours,' said Lord
Marney, Ms not to be thrown over in that way.'

It was just at this moment that a servant entered
with a card, when the duke, looking at it, said, * It is
Tadpole; shall we have him in? 1 dare say he will
tell us something.' And, notwithstanding the impor-
tant character of their conference, political curiosity,
and perhaps some private feeling which not one of
them cared to acknowledge, made them unanimously
agree that Mr. Tadpole should be admitted.

'Lord Marney and Lord de Mowbray with the
Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine,' thought Mr. Tadpole, as he
was ushered into the library; and his eye, practised
in machinations and prophetic in manoeuvres, surveyed
the three nobles. 'This looks like business and per-
haps means mischief. Very lucky I called!' With an
honest smile he saluted them all.

38o BENJAMIN DISRAELI

' What news from the palace, Tadpole ? ' inquired
the duke.

'Sir Robert is there,' replied Tadpole.

'That is good news/ exclaimed his Grace, echoed
by Lord de Mowbray, and backed up with a faint
bravo from Lord Marney.

Then arose a conversation in which all affected
much interest respecting the Jamaica debate; whether
the Whigs had originally intended to resign; whether
it were Lord Melbourne or Lord John who had in-
sisted on the step; whether, if postponed, they could
have tided over the session; and so on. Tadpole,
who was somewhat earnest in his talk, seemed to
have pinned the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine; Lord Marney,
who wanted to say a word alone to Lord de Mow-
bray, had dexterously drawn that personage aside on
the pretence of looking at a picture. Tadpole, who,
with a most frank and unsophisticated mien, had an
eye for every corner of a room, seized the opportu-
nity for which he had been long cruising. *I don't
pretend to be behind the scenes, duke, but it was
said to me to-day, ''Tadpole, if you do chance to see
the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, you may say that posi-
tively Lord Killcroppy will not go to Ireland." '

A smile of satisfaction played over the handsome
face of the duke: instantly suppressed lest it might
excite suspicion; and then, with a friendly and signifi-
cant nod, that intimated to Tadpole not to dwell on
the subject at the present moment, the duke with a
rather uninterested air recurred to the Jamaica debate,
and soon after appealed on some domestic point to
his son-in-law. This broke up the conversation be-
tween Lord de Mowbray and Lord Marney. Lord de
Mowbray advancing, was met accidentally on purpose

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381

by Mr. Tadpole, who seemed anxious to push for-
ward to Lord Marney.

* You have heard of Lord Ribbonville ? ' said Tad-
pole in a suppressed tone.

*No; what?'

'Can't live the day out. How fortunate Sir
Robert is! Two garters to begin with!'

Tadpole had now succeeded in tackling Lord
Marney alone; the other peers were far out of ear-
shot. * I don't pretend to be behind the scenes, my
lord,' said the honest gentleman in a peculiarly
confidential tone, and with a glance that spoke
volumes of state secrecy; 'but it was said to me to-
day, ''Tadpole, if you do chance to meet Lord Mar-
ney, you may say that positively Lord Rambrooke
will not have the Buckhounds." '

'All I want,' said Lord Marney, 'is to see men of
character about her Majesty. This is a domestic
country, and the country expects that no nobleman
should take household office whose private character
is not inexpugnable. Now that fellow Rambrooke
keeps a Frenchwoman. It is not much known, but
it is a fact.'

'Dreadful!* exclaimed Mr. Tadpole. 'I have no
doubt of it. But he has no chance of the Buck-
hounds, you may rely on that. Private character is
to be the basis of the new government. Since the
Reform Act, that is a qualification much more esteemed
by the constituency than public services. We must
go with the times, my lord. A virtuous middle class
shrinks with horror from French actresses; and the
Wesleyans — the Wesleyans must be considered, Lord
Marney.'

'I always subscribe to them,' said his lordship.

382 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Ah!' said Mr. Tadpole, mysteriously, 'I am glad
to hear that. Nothing I have heard to-day has given
me so much pleasure as those few words. One may
hardly jest on such a subject,' he added, with a sanc-
timonious air; 'but I think I may say,* and here he
broke into a horse smile, ' I think 1 may say that those
subscriptions will not be without their fruit.' And with
a bow honest Tadpole disappeared, saying to himself
as he left the house, 'If you were ready to be con-
spirators when 1 entered the room, my lords, you
were at least prepared to be traitors when 1 quitted it.'

In the meantime Lord Marney, in the best possi-
ble humour, said to Lord de Mowbray, 'You are go-
ing to White's, are you? If so, take me.'

' I am sorry, my dear lord, but I have an appoint-
ment in the city. I have to go to the Temple, and 1
am already behind my time.'

CHAPTER XLV.

Fears of Lord de Mowbray.

ND why was Lord de Mowbray go-
ing to the Temple? He had re-
ceived the day before, when he
came home to dress, a disagree-
able letter from some lawyers, ap-
prising him that they were instructed
by their client, Mr. Walter Gerard, to commence pro-
ceedings against his lordship on a writ of right, with
respect to his manors of Mowbray, Valence, Mowe-
dale, Mowbray Valence, and several others carefully
enumerated in their precise epistle, the catalogue of
which read like an extract from Domesday Book.

More than twenty years had elapsed since the
question had been mooted; and though the discussion
had left upon Lord de Mowbray an impression from
which at times he had never entirely recovered, still
circumstances had occurred since the last proceedings
which gave him a moral, if not a legal, conviction
that he should be disturbed no more. And these
were the circumstances: Lord de Mowbray, after the
death of the father of Walter Gerard, had found him-
self in corhmunication with the agent who had de-
veloped and pursued the claim for the yeoman, and

(583)

384 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

had purchased for a good round sum the documents
on which that claim was founded, and by which
alone apparently that claim could be sustained.

The vendor of these muniments was Baptist Hat-
ton, and the sum which he obtained for them, by
allowing him to settle in the metropolis, pursue his
studies, purchase his library and collections, and other-
wise give himself that fair field which brains without
capital can seldom command, was in fact the founda-
tion of his fortune. Many years afterwards Lord de
Mowbray had recognised Hatton in the prosperous
parliamentary agent who often appeared at the bar of
the House of Lords, and before committees of privi-
lege, and who gradually obtained an unrivalled repu-
tation and employment in peerage cases. Lord de
Mowbray renewed his acquaintance with a man who
was successful; bowed to Hatton whenever they met;
and finally consulted him respecting the barony of
Valence, which had been in the old Fitz-Warene and
Mowbray families, and to which it was thought the
present earl might prefer some hocus-pocus claim
through his deceased mother; so that, however recent
was his date as an English earl, he might figure on
the roll as a Plantagenet baron, which in the course
of another century would complete the grand mystifi-
cation of high nobility. The death of his son, dex-
terously christened Valence, had a little damped his
ardour in this respect; but still there was a sufficiently
intimate connection kept up between him and Hal-
ton; so that, before he placed the letter he had re-
ceived in the hands of his lawyers, he thought it
desirable to consult his ancient ally.

This was the reason that Lord de Mowbray was
at the present moment seated in the same chair, in

SYBIL

385

the same library, as was a few days back that worthy
baronet, Sir Vavasour Firebrace. Mr. Hatton was
at the same table similarly employed; his Persian cat
on his right hand, and his choice spaniels reposing
on their cushions at his feet.

Mr. Hatton held forward his hand to receive the
letter of which Lord de Mowbray had been speaking
to him, and which he read with great attention,
weighing, as it were, each word. Singular! as the
letter had been written by himself, and the firm who
signed it were only his instruments, obeying the
spring of the master hand.

'Very remarkable!' said Mr. Hatton.

*Is it not.?' said Lord de Mowbray.

'And your lordship received this yesterday?'

* Yesterday. I lost no time in communicating with
you.'

'Jubb and Jinks,' continued Mr. Hatton, musingly,
surveying the signature of the letter. *A respectable
firm.'

'That makes it more strange,' said his lordship.
'It does,' said Mr. Hatton.

'A respectable firm would hardly embark in such
a proceeding without some show of pretext,' said Lord
de Mowbray.

'Hardly,' said Mr. Hatton.

'But what can they have?' urged his lordship.

'What, indeed?' said Mr. Hatton. 'Mr. Walter
Gerard, without his pedigree, is a mere flash in the
pan; and I defy him to prove anything without the
deed of '77.'

'Well, he has not got that,' said Lord de Mow-
bray.

'Safe, of course?' said Mr. Hatton.

14 B. D.— 25

386 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Certain. I almost wish I had burnt it as well as
the whole boxful.'

' Destroy that deed and the other muniments, and
the Earl de Mowbray will never be Baron Valence,'
said Mr. Hatton.

*But what use are these deeds now?' said his
lordship. ' If we produce them, we may give a colour
to this fellow's claim.'

'Time will settle his claim,' said Mr. Hatton; Mt
will mature yours. You can wait.'

'Alas', since the death of my poor boy — '

' It has become doubly important. Substantiate the
barony, it will descend to your eldest daughter, who,
even if married, will retain your name. Your family
will live, and ennobled. The Fitz-Warenes Lords
Valence will yield to none in antiquity; and, as to
rank, so long as Mowbray Castle belongs to them,
the revival of the earldom is safe at the first corona-
tion, or the first ministry that exists with a balanced
state of parties.'

'That is the right view of the case,' said Lord de
Mowbray; 'and what do you advise?'

'Be calm, and you have nothing to fear. This is
the mere revival of an old claim, too vast to be al-
lowed to lapse from desuetude. Your documents, you
say, are all secure?'

' Be sure of that. They are at this moment in the
muniment room of the great tower of Mowbray Castle;
in the same iron box and in the same cabinet they
were deposited — '

'When, by placing them in your hands,' said Mr.
Hatton, finishing a sentence which might have been
awkward, ' I had the satisfaction of confirming the
rights and calming the anxieties of one of our ancient

SYBIL

387

houses. I would recommend your lordship to instruct
your lawyers to appear to this writ as a matter of
course. But enter into no details, no unnecessary
confidence with them. They are needless. Treat the
matter lightly, especially to them. You will hear no
more of it.'

'You feel confidence?'

* Perfect. Walter Gerard has no documents of any
kind. Whatever his claim might be, good or bad,
the only evidence that can prove his pedigree is in
your possession, and the only use to which it ever
will be put, will be in due time to seat your grand-
son in the House of Lords.'

M am glad I called upon you,' said Lord de Mow-
bray.

* To be sure. Your lordship can speak to me
without reserve, and I am used to these start-ups.
It is part of the trade; but an old soldier is not to be
deceived by such feints.'

' Clearly a feint, you think ? '
'A feint! a feint.'

'Good morning. I am glad I called. How goes
on my friend Sir Vavasour ? '

'Oh! I shall land him at last.'

' Well, he is an excellent neighbourly man. I have
a great respect for Sir Vavasour. Would you dine
with me, Mr. Hatton, on Thursday.^ It would give
me and Lady de Mowbray great pleasure.'

'Your lordship is extremely kind,' said Mr. Hatton
bowing with a slight sarcastic smile, 'but I am a
hermit.'

'But your friends should see you sometimes,' said
Lord de Mowbray.

' Your lordship is too good, but I am a mere man

388 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

of business, and know my position. I feel I am not
at home in ladies' society.'

'Well then, come to-morrow: I am alone, and 1
will ask some persons to meet you whom you know
and like: Sir Vavasour and Lord Shaftesbury, and a
most learned Frenchman who is over here, a Vicomte
de Narbonne, who is very anxious to make your ac-
quaintance. Your name is current, I can tell you, at
Paris.'

*Your lordship is too good; another day: I have
a great pressure of affairs at present.'

'Well, well; so be it. Good morning, Mr. Hat-
ton.'

Hatton bowed lowly. The moment the door was
shut, rubbing his hands, he said, * In the same box
and in the same cabinet: the muniment room in the
great tower of Mowbray Castle! They exist and 1
know their whereabouts. I'll have 'em.'

CHAPTER XLVI.

An Awkward 'Hitch.'

WO and even three days had rolled
over since Mr. Tadpole had re-
ported Sir Robert on his way to
the palace, and marvellously little
/ had transpired. It was of course
known that a cabinet was in for-

mation, and the daily papers reported to the public the
diurnal visits of certain noble lords and right honour-
able gentlemen to the new first Minister. But the
world of high politics had suddenly become so cau-
tious that nothing leaked out. Even gossip was at
fault. Lord Marney had not received the Buckhounds,
though he never quitted his house for ride or lounge
without leaving precise instructions with Captain
Grouse as to the identical time he should return home,
so that his acceptance should not be delayed. Ire-
land was not yet governed by the Duke of Fitz-
Aquitaine, and the Earl de Mowbray was still ungartered.
These three distinguished noblemen were all of them
anxious — a little fidgety; but at the same time it was
not even whispered that Lord Rambrooke or any other
lord had received the post which Lord Marney had
appropriated to himself; nor had Lord Killcroppy had

(389)

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

a suspicious interview with the Prime Minister, which
kept the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine quiet though not
easy; while not a shadow of coming events had
glanced over the vacant stall of Lord Ribbonville in
St. George's Chapel, and this made Lord de Mow-
bray tranquil, though scarcely content. In the mean-
time, daily and hourly they all pumped Mr. Tadpole,
who did not find it difficult to keep up his reputation
for discretion; for, knowing nothing, and beginning
himself to be perplexed at the protracted silence, he
took refuge in oracular mystery, and delivered him-
self of certain Delphic sentences, which adroitly
satisfied those who consulted him while they never
committed himself.

At length one morning there was an odd whisper
in the circle of first initiation. The blood mantled on
the cheek of Lady St. Julians; Lady Deloraine turned
pale. Lady Firebrace wrote confidential notes with
the same pen to Mr. Tadpole and Lord Masque.
Lord Marney called early in the morning on the Duke
of Fitz-Aquitaine, and already found Lord de Mowbray
there. The clubs were crowded even at noon. Every-
where a mysterious bustle and an awful stir.

What could be the matter? What has happened?

Mt is true,' said Mr. Egerton to Mr. Berners at
Brooks'.

*ls it true?' asked Mr. Jermyn of Lord Valentine
at the Carlton.

'I heard it last night at Crockford's,' said Mr.
Ormsby; 'one always hears things there four-and-
twenty hours before other places.'

The world was employed the whole of the morn-
ing in asking and answering this important question,
'Is it true?' Towards dinner-time, it was settled

SYBIL

391

universally in the affirmative, and then the world
went out to dine and to ascertain why it was true
and how it was true.

And now, what had really happened ? What had
happened was what is commonly called a 'hitch.'
There was undoubtedly a hitch somewhere and
somehow; a hitch in the construction of the new
cabinet. Who could have thought it? The Whig
ministers it seems had resigned, but somehow or
other had not entirely and completely gone out.
What a constitutional dilemma! The Houses must
evidently meet, address the throne, and impeach its
obstinate counsellors. Clearly the right course, and
party feeling ran so high that it was not impossible
that something might be done. At any rate, it was
a capital opportunity for the House of Lords to pluck
up a little courage and take what is called, in high
political jargon, the initiative. Lord Marney, at the
suggestion of Mr. Tadpole, was quite ready to do
this; and so was the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, and al-
most the Earl de Mowbray.

But then, when all seemed ripe and ready, and
there appeared a probability of the * Independence of
the House of Lords' being again the favourite toast
of Conservative dinners, the oddest rumour in the
world got about, which threw such ridicule on these
great constitutional movements in petto, that, even
with the Buckhounds in the distance and Tadpole at
his elbow, Lord Marney hesitated. It seemed, though
of course no one could for a moment credit it, that
these wrong-headed, rebellious ministers who would
not go out, wore — petticoats!

And the great Jamaica debate that had been
cooked so long, and the anxiously-expected yet al-

392 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

most despaired-of defection of the independent Radical
section, and the full-dressed visit to the palace that
had gladdened the heart of Tadpole, were they all to
end in this ? Was Conservatism, that mighty mystery
of the nineteenth century, was it after all to be
brained by a fan?

Since the farce of the ' Invincibles * nothing had
ever been so ludicrously successful.

Lady Deloraine consoled herself for the ' Bedcham-
ber Plot,' by declaring that Lady St. Julians was in-
directly the cause of it, and that, had it not been for
the anticipation of her official entrance into the royal
apartments, the conspiracy would not have been
more real than the Meal-tub plot, or any other of the
many imaginary machinations that still haunt the
page of history, and occasionally flit about the preju-
diced memory of nations. Lady St. Julians, on the
contrary, wrung her hands over the unhappy fate of
her enthralled Sovereign, deprived of her faithful pres-
ence, and obliged to put up with the society of per-
sonages of whom she knew nothing, and who called
themselves the friends of her youth. The ministers
who had missed, especially those who had received,
their appointments looked as all men do when they
are jilted: embarrassed, and affecting an awkward
ease; as if they knew something which, if they told,
would free them from the supreme ridicule of their
situation, but which, as men of delicacy and honour,
they refrained from revealing. All those who had
been in fluttering hopes, however faint, of receiving
preferment, took courage now that the occasion had
passed, and loudly complained of their cruel and un-
deniable deprivation. The constitution was wounded
in their persons. Some fifty gentlemen, who had not

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393

been appointed under-Secretaries of State, moaned over
the martyrdom of young ambition.

'Peel ought to have taken office,' said Lord Mar-
ney. 'What are the women to us?'

'Peel ought to have taken office,' said the Duke
of Fitz-Aquitaine. 'He should have remembered how
much he owed to Ireland.'

'Peel ought to have taken office,' said Lord de
Mowbray. 'The garter will become now a mere
party badge.'

Perhaps it may be allowed to the impartial pen
that traces these memoirs of our times to agree,
though for a different reason, with these distinguished
followers of Sir Robert Peel. One may be permitted
to think that, under all circumstances, he should
have taken office in 1839. His withdrawal seems to
have been a mistake. In the great heat of parliamen-
tary faction which had prevailed since 1831, the royal
prerogative, which, unfortunately for the rights and
liberties and social welfare of the people, had since
1688 been more or less oppressed, had waned fainter
and fainter. A youthful princess on the throne,
whose appearance touched the imagination, and to
whom her people were generally inclined to ascribe
something of that decision of character which be-
comes those born to command, offered a favourable
opportunity to restore the exercise of that regal au-
thority, the usurpation of whose functions has entailed
on the people of England so much suffering, and so
much degradation. It was unfortunate that one who,
if any, should have occupied the proud and national
position of the leader of the Tory party, the chief of
the people and the champion of the throne, should
have commenced his career as minister under Victoria

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

by an unseemly contrariety to the personal wishes of
the Queen. The reaction of public opinion, disgusted
with years of parliamentary tumult and the incoher-
ence of party legislation, the balanced state in the
kingdom of political parties themselves, the personal
character of the Sovereign; these were all causes
which intimated that a movement in favour of pre-
rogative was at hand. The leader of the Tory party
should have vindicated his natural position, and
availed himself of the gracious occasion; he missed it;
and, as the occasion was inevitable, the Whigs en-
joyed its occurrence. And thus England witnessed
for the first time the portentous anomaly of the oli-
garchical or Venetian party, which had in the old
days destroyed the free monarchy of England, retain-
ing power merely by the favour of the Court.

But we forget. Sir Robert Peel is not the leader
of the Tory party; the party that resisted the ruinous
mystification that metamorphosed direct taxation by
the Crown into indirect taxation by the Commons;
that denounced the system which mortgaged industry
to protect property; the party that ruled Ireland by a
scheme which reconciled both churches, and by a
series of parliaments which counted among them lords
and commons of both religions; that has maintained
at all times the territorial constitution of England as
the only basis and security for local government, and
which nevertheless once laid on the table of the House
of Commons a commercial tariff negotiated at Utrecht,
which is the most rational that was ever devised by
statesmen; a party that has prevented the Church
from being the salaried agent of the state, and has sup-
ported through many struggles the parochial polity of
the country which secures to every labourer a home.

SYBIL

395

In a parliamentary sense, that great party has
ceased to exist; but I will believe that it still lives in
the thought and sentiment and consecrated memory
of the English nation. It has its origin in great
principles and in noble instincts; it sympathises with
the lowly, it looks up to the Most High; it can count
its heroes and its martyrs; they have met in its be-
half plunder, proscription, and death. Nor, when it
finally yielded to the iron progress of oligarchical su-
premacy, was its catastrophe inglorious. Its genius
was vindicated in golden sentences and with fervent
arguments of impassioned logic by St. John; and
breathed in the intrepid eloquence and patriot soul of
Wilham Wyndham. Even now it is not dead, but
sleepeth; and, in an age of political materialism, of
confused purposes and perplexed intelhgence, that as-
pires only to wealth because it has faith in no other
accomplishment, as men rifle cargoes on the verge of
shipwreck, Toryism will yet rise from the tomb over
which Bolingbroke shed his last tear, to bring back
strength to the Crown, liberty to the subject, and to
announce that power has only one duty: to secure
the social welfare of the people.

CHAPTER XLVII.

The Gulf Is Impassable.'

URING the week of political agi-
tation which terminated with the
inglorious catastrophe of the Bed-
chamber Plot, Sybil remained tran-
quil, and would have been scarcely
conscious of what was disturbing
so many right honourable hearts, had it not been for
the incidental notice of their transactions by her father
and his friends. To the Chartists, indeed, the factious
embroilment at first was of no great moment, except
as the breaking up and formation of cabinets might
delay the presentation of the National Petition. They
had long ceased to distinguish between the two
parties who then and now contend for power. And
they were right. Between the noble lord who goes
out, and the right honourable gentleman who comes
in, where is the distinctive principle? A shadowy
difference may be stimulated in opposition, to serve a
cry and stimulate the hustings; but the mask is not
worn, even in Downing Streeet; and the conscientious
Conservative seeks, in the pigeon-holes of a Whig
bureau, for the measures against which for ten years
he has been sanctioning, by the speaking silence of
an approving nod, a general wail of frenzied alarm.
(396)

SYBIL 397

Once it was otherwise; once the people recognised
a party in the state whose principles identified them
with the rights and privileges of the multitude: but
when they found the parochial constitution of the
country sacrificed without a struggle, and a rude as-
sault made on all local influences in order to establish
a severely organised centralisation, a blow was given
to the influence of the priest and of the gentleman,
the ancient champions of the people against arbitrary
courts and rapacious parliaments, from which they
will find that it requires no ordinary courage and
wisdom to recover.

The unexpected termination of the events of May,
1839, in the re-establishment in power of a party
confessedly too weak to carry on the parliamentary
government of the country, was viewed however by
the Chartists in a very different spirit from that with
which they had witnessed the outbreak of these
transactions. It had unquestionably a tendency to
animate their efforts, and imparted a bolder tone to
their future plans and movements. They were en-
couraged to try a fall with a feeble administration.
Gerard from this moment became engrossed in affairs;
his correspondence greatly increased; and he was so
much occupied that Sybil saw daily less and less of
her father.

It was on the morning after the day that Hatton
had made his first and unlooked-for visit in Smith
Square, that some of the delegates, who had caught
the rumour of the resignation of the Whigs, had called
early on Gerard, and he had soon after left the house
in their company; and Sybil was alone. The strange
incidents of the preceding day were revolving in her
mind, as her eye wandered vaguely over her book.

398 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

The presence of that Hatton who had so often, and
in such different scenes, occupied their conversation;
the re-appearance of that stranger, whose unexpected
entrance into their little world had eighteen months
ago so often lent interest and pleasure to their life:
these were materials for pensive sentiment. Mr.
Franklin had left some gracious memories with Sybil;
the natural legacy of one so refined, intelligent, and
gentle, whose temper seemed never ruffled, and who
evidently so sincerely relished their society. Mowe-
dale rose before her in all the golden beauty of its
autumnal hour; their wild rambles and hearty greet-
ings, and earnest converse when her father returned
from his daily duties, and his eye kindled with
pleasure as the accustomed knock announced the
arrival of his almost daily companion. In spite of the
excitement of the passing moment, its high hopes and
glorious aspirations, and visions perchance of great-
ness and of power, the eye of Sybil was dimmed
with emotion as she recalled that innocent and tran-
quil dream.

Her father had heard from Franklin after his de-
parture more than once; but his letters, though
abounding in frank expressions of deep interest in the
welfare of Gerard and his daughter, were in some
degree constrained; a kind of reserve seemed to en-
velop him; they never learnt anything of his life and
duties; he seemed sometimes, as it were, meditating a
departure from his country. There was undoubtedly
about him something mysterious and unsatisfactory.
Morley was of opinion that he was a spy; Gerard,
less suspicious, ultimately concluded that he was
harassed by his creditors, and when at Mowedale was
probably hiding from them.

SYBIL

And now the mystery was at length dissolved.
And what an explanation! A Norman, a noble, an
oppressor of the people, a plunderer of the Church:
all the characters and capacities that Sybil had been
bred to look upon with fear and aversion, and to
recognise as the authors of the degradation of her
race.

Sybil sighed; the door opened, and Egremont
stood before her. The blood rose to her cheek, her
heart trembled; for the first time in his presence she
felt embarrassed and constrained. His countenance on
the contrary was collected, serious, and pale.

* I am an intruder,' he said advancing, 'but 1 wish
much to speak to you,' and he seated himself near
her. There was a momentary pause. 'You seemed
to treat with scorn yesterday,' resumed Egremont, in
accents less sustained, 'the behef that sympathy was
independent of the mere accidents of position. Pardon
me, Sybil, but even you may be prejudiced.' He
paused.

M should be sorry to treat anything you said
with scorn,' replied Sybil, in a subdued tone.
'Many things happened yesterday,' she added, 'which
might be offered as some excuse for an unguarded
word.'

'Would that it had been unguarded!' said Egre-
mont, in a voice of melancholy. ' I could have en-
dured it with less repining. No, Sybil, I have known
you, I have had the happiness and the sorrow of
knowing you too well to doubt the convictions of
your mind, or to believe that they can be lightly re-
moved, and yet I would strive to remove them. You
look upon me as an enemy, as a natural foe, be-
cause I am born among the privileged. 1 am a man,

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Sybil, as well as a noble.' Again he paused; she
looked down, but did not speak.

*And can I not feel for men, my fellows, what-
ever be their lot? 1 know you will deny it; but you
are in error, Sybil; you have formed your opinions
upon tradition, not upon experience. The world that
exists is not the world of which you have read; the
class that calls itself your superior is not the same
class as ruled in the time of your fathers. There is
a change in them as in all other things, and I partici-
pate in that change. I shared it before I knew you,
Sybil; and if it touched me then, at least believe it
does not influence me less now.'

*If there be a change,' said Sybil, *it is because in
some degree the people have learnt their strength.'

'Ah! dismiss from your mind those fallacious
fancies,' said Egremont. 'The people are not strong;
the people never can be strong. Their attempts at
self-vindication will end only in their suffering and
confusion. It is civiHsation that has effected, that is
effecting, this change. It is that increased knowledge
of themselves that teaches the educated their social
duties. There is a dayspring in the history of this
nation, which perhaps those only who are on the
mountain tops can as yet recognise. You deem you
are in darkness, and I see a dawn. The new genera-
tion of the aristocracy of England are not tyrants, not
oppressors, Sybil, as you persist in believing. Their
intelligence, better than that, their hearts, are open to
the responsibility of their position. But the work
that is before them is no holiday-work. It is not
the fever of superficial impulse that can remove the
deep-fixed barriers of centuries of ignorance and
crime. Enough that their sympathies are awakened;

SYBIL

401

time and thought will bring the rest. They are the
natural leaders of the people, Sybil; believe me, they
are the only ones.'

'The leaders of the people are those whom the
people trust,' said Sybil, rather haughtily.

'And who may betray them,' said Egremont.

' Betray them ! ' exclaimed Sybil. ' And can you
believe that my father — '

'No, no; you can feel, Sybil, though I cannot ex-
press, how much 1 honour your father. But he stands
alone in the singleness and purity of his heart. Who
surround him ?'

'Those whom the people have also chosen; and
from a like confidence in their virtues and abilities.
They are a senate supported by the sympathy of mil-
lions, with only one object in view, the emancipation
of their race. It is a sublime spectacle, these dele-
gates of labour advocating the sacred cause in a
manner which might shame your haughty factions.
What can resist a demonstration so truly national ?
What can withstand the supremacy of its moral
power?'

Her eye met the glance of Egremont. That brow,
full of thought and majesty, was fixed on his. He
encountered that face radiant as a seraph's; those dark
eyes flashing with the inspiration of the martyr.

Egremont rose, moved slowly to the window,
gazed in abstraction for a few moments on the little
garden, with its dank turf that no foot ever trod, its
mutilated statue, and its mouldering frescoes. What
a silence; how profound! What a prospect; how
drear! Suddenly he turned, and advancing with a
more rapid pace, he approached Sybil. Her head was
averted, and leaning on her left arm, she seemed lost

14 B. D.— 26

402 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

in reverie. Egremont fell upon his knee, and gently
taking her hand, he pressed it to his lips. She started,
she looked round, agitated, alarmed, while he breathed
forth in tremulous accents, * Let me express to you
my adoration!

* Ah! not now for the first time, but for ever; from
the moment I first beheld you in the starlit arch of
Marney, has your spirit ruled my being, and softened
every spring of my affections. I followed you to
your home, and lived for a time content in the silent
worship of your nature. When 1 came the last morn-
ing to the cottage, it was to tell, and to ask, all.
Since then for a moment your image has never been
absent from my consciousness; your picture con-
secrates my hearth, and your approval has been the
spur of my career. Do not reject my love ; it is deep
as your nature, and fervent as my own. Banish those
prejudices that have embittered your existence, and,
if persisted in, may wither mine. Deign to retain
this hand! If I be a noble, I have none of the acci-
dents of nobAity: I cannot offer you wealth, splen-
dour, or power; but 1 can offer you the devotion of
an entranced being, aspirations that you shall guide,
an ambition that you shall govern.'

* These words are mystical and wild,' said Sybil
with an amazed air; 'they come upon me with con-
vulsive suddenness.* And she paused for an instant,
collecting, as it were, her mind with an expression al-
most of pain upon her countenance. 'These changes
of life are so strange and rapid that it seems to me I
can scarcely meet them. You are Lord Marney's
brother; it was but yesterday, only yesterday, 1 learnt
it. I thought then I had lost your friendship, and
now you speak of — love! love of me! Retain your

FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING BY FRANCIS VAUX WILSON

Egremont fell upon his knees, and gently taking her
hand he pressed it to his lips.

(See page 402.)

them

SYBIL

403

hand and share your life and fortunes! You forget
what I am. But though I learnt only yesterday what
you are, I will not be so remiss. Once you wrote
upon a page you were my faithful friend; and I have
pondered over that line with kindness often. I will
be your faithful friend; I will recall you to yourself.
I will at least not bring you shame and degradation.'

*0h, Sybil, beloved, beautiful Sybil, not such bit-
ter words; no, no!'

*No bitterness to you! that would indeed be
harsh,' and she covered with her hand her streaming
eyes.

'Why, what is this?' after a pause and with an
effort she exclaimed. 'A union between the child
and brother of nobles and a daughter of the people!
Estrangement from your family, and with cause; their
hopes destroyed, their pride outraged; alienation from
your order, and justly, all their prejudices insulted.
You will forfeit every source of worldly content and
cast off every spring of social success. Society for
you will become a great confederation to deprive you
of self-complacency. And rightly. Will you not be
a traitor to the cause ? No, no, kind friend, for such
I'll call you. Your opinion of me, too good ^nd
great as I feel it, touches me deeply. 1 am not used
to such passages in life; I have read of such. Pardon
me, feel for me, if I receive them with some disorder.
They sound to me for the first time, and for the
last. Perhaps they ought never to have reached my
ear. No matter now; I have a life of penitence be-
fore me, and I trust I shall be pardoned.' And she
wept.

*You have indeed punished me for the fatal acci-
dent of birth, if it deprives me of you.*

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

'Not so,' she added, weeping; M shall never be
the bride of earth; and but for one, whose claims
though earthly are to me irresistible, I should have
ere this forgotten my hereditary sorrows in the clois-
ter.'

All this time Egremont had retained her hand,
which she had not attempted to withdraw. He had
bent his head over it as she spoke; it was touched
with his tears. For some moments there was silence;
then, looking up and in a smothered voice, Egremont
made one more effort to induce Sybil to consider his
suit. He combated her views as to the importance
to him of the sympathies of his family and of society;
he detailed to her his hopes and plans for their future
welfare; he dwelt with passionate eloquence on his
abounding love. But, with a solemn sweetness, and
as it were a tender inflexibility, the tears trickling
down her soft cheek, and pressing his hand in both
of hers, she subdued and put aside all his efforts.

'Believe me,' she said, 'the gulf is impassable.'

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Riots at Birmingham.

ERRIBLE news from Birmingham,'
said Mr. Egerton at Brooks's. ' They
have massacred the police, beat
L off the military, and sacked the
/town. News just arrived.'

^^^y^^^^^'^::^^ ' I have known it these two hours,'
said a grey-headed gentleman, speaking without tak-
ing his eyes off the newspaper. ' There is a cabinet
sitting now.'

'Well, I always said so,' said Mr. Egerton; 'our
fellows ought to have put down that Convention.'

Mt is deuced lucky,' said Mr. Berners, 'that the
Bedchamber business is over, and we are all right.
This affair, in the midst of the Jamaica hitch, would
have been fatal to us.'

'These Chartists evidently act upon a system,'
said Mr. Egerton. ' You see they were perfectly
quiet till the National Petition was presented and de-
bated; and now, almost simultaneously with our re-
fusing to consider their petition,, we have news of
this outbreak.'

'I hope they will not spread,' said the grey-headed
gentleman. 'There are not troops enough in the
country if there be anything like a general movement.

(405)

4o6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

I hear they have sent the Guards down by a special
train, and a hundred more of the police. London is
not over-garrisoned.'

'They are always ready for a riot at Birmingham,'
said a Warwickshire peer. 'Trade is very bad there
and they suffer a good deal. But I should think it
would not go farther.'

'I am told,' said the grey-headed gentleman, 'that
business is getting slack in all the districts.'

'It might be better,' said Mr. Egerton, 'but they
have got work.'

Here several gentlemen entered, inquiring whether
the evening papers were in, and what was the news
from Birmingham.

'I am told,' said one of them, 'that the police
were regularly smashed.'

'Is it true that the military were really beat off?'

'Quite untrue: the fact is, there were no proper
preparations; the town was taken by surprise, the
magistrates lost their heads; the people were masters
of the place; and when the police did act, they were
met by a triumphant populace, who two hours before
would have fled before them. They say they have
burnt down forty houses.'

'It is a bad thing, this beating the police,' said the
grey-headed gentleman.

'But what is the present state of affairs?' inquired
Mr. Berners. 'Are the rioters put down?'

'Not in the least,' said Mr. Egerton, 'as 1 hear.
They are encamped in the Bull Ring amid smoking
ruins, and breathe nothing but havoc'

' Well, I voted for taking the National Petition into
consideration,' said Mr. Berners. 'It could do us no
harm, and would have kept things quiet.'

SYBIL

407

*So did every fellow on our side/ said Mr. Egerton,
'who was not in office or about to be. Well, Heaven
knows what may come next. The Charter may some
day be as popular in this club as the Reform Act.'

'The oddest thing in that debate/ said Mr. Ber-
ners, 'was Egremont's move.'

'I saw Marney last night at Lady St. Julians*/ said
Mr. Egerton, 'and congratulated him on his brother's
speech. He looked daggers, and grinned like a ghoul.'

'It was a very remarkable speech, that of Eger-
mont,' said the grey-headed gentleman. 'I wonder
what he wants.'

'1 think he must be going to turn Radical,' said
the Warwickshire peer.

'Why, the whole speech was against Radicalism,'
said Mr. Egerton. •

'Ah, then he is going to turn Whig, I suppose.'

'He is ultra anti-Whig,' said Egerton.

'Then what the deuce is he?' said Mr. Berners.

'Not a Conservative certainly, for Lady St. Julians
does nothing but abuse him.'

'I suppose he is crotchety,' suggested the War-
wickshire noble.

'That speech of Egremont was the most really
democratic speech that I ever read,' said the grey-
headed gentleman. ' How was it listened to ? '

'Oh! capitally,' said Mr. Egmon. 'He has seldom
spoken before, and always slightly though well. He
was listened to with mute attention; never was a
better house. I should say made a great impression,
though no one knew exactly what he was after.'

'What does he mean by obtaining the results of
the Charter without the intervention of its machinery?'
inquired Lord Loraine, a mild, middle-aged, lounging,

4o8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

languid man, who passed his life in crossing from
Brooks's to Boodle's, and from Boodle's to Brooks's, and
testing the comparative intelligence of these two cele-
brated bodies; himself gifted with no ordinary abili-
ties cultivated with no ordinary care, but the victim
of sauntering, his sultana queen, as it was, according
to Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, of the Second
Charles Stuart.

'He spoke throughout in an exoteric vein,' said
the grey-headed gentleman, ' and I apprehend was not
very sure of his audience; but I took him to mean,
indeed it was the gist of the speech, that if you wished
for a time to retain your political power, you could
only effect your purpose by securing for the people
greater social felicity.'

'Well, that is sheer Radicalism,' said the Warwick-
shire peer; 'pretending that the people can be better
off than they are, is Radicalism and nothing else.'

'I fear, if that be Radicalism,' said Lord Loraine,
'we must all take a leaf out of the same book.
Sloane was saying at Boodle's just now that he looked
forward to the winter in his country with horror.'

'And they have no manufactures there,' said Mr.
Egerton.

' Sloane was always a croaker,' said the Warwick-
shire peer. 'He always said the New Poor Law
would not act, and there is no part of the country
where it works so well as in his own.'

' They say at Boodle's there is to be an increase to
the army,' said Lord Loraine; 'ten thousand men im-
mediately; decided on by the cabinet this afternoon.'

' It could hardly have leaked out by this time,'
said the grey-headed gentleman. ' The cabinet were
sitting less than an hour ago.'

SYBIL

'They have been up a good hour/ said Lord Lo-
raine, ' quite long enough for their decisions to be
known in St. James' Street. In the good old times,
George Farnley used always to walk from Downing
Street to this place the moment the council was up
and tell us everything.'

* Ah! those were the good old gentleman-like times,'
said Mr. Berners, ' when members of Parliament had
nobody to please and ministers of State nothing to do.'

The riots of Birmingham occurred two months after
the events that closed our last chapter. That period,
so far as the obvious movements of the Chartists were
concerned, had been passed in preparations for the
presentation and discussion of the National Petition,
which the parliamentary embroilments of the spring
of that year had hitherto procrastinated and prevented.
The petition was ultimately carried down to West-
minster on a triumphal car, accompanied by all the
delegates of the Convention in solemn procession. It
was necessary to construct a machine in order to in-
troduce the huge bulk of parchment, signed by a
million and a half of persons, into the House of Com-
mons; and thus supported, its vast form remained on
the floor of the House during the discussion. The
House, after a debate which was not deemed by the
people commensurate with the importance of the oc-
casion, decided on rejecting the prayer of the Petition,
and from that moment the party in the Convention
who advocated a recourse to physical force in order
to obtain their purpose, was in the ascendant.

The National Petition, and the belief that, though its
objects would not at present be obtained, yet a solemn
and prolonged debate on its prayer would at least
hold out to the working-classes the hope that their

4IO BENJAMIN DISRAELI

rights might from that date rank among the acknowl-
edged subjects of parliamentary discussion, and ulti-
mately, by the force of discussion, be recognised, as
other rights of other portions of the people once
equally disputed, had been the means by which the
party in the Convention who upheld on all occasions
the supremacy of moral power had been able to curb
the energetic and reckless minority, who derided from
the first all other methods but terror and violence as
effective of their end. The hopes of all, the vanity of
many, were frustrated and shocked by finding that
the exertions and expenditure of long months were
not only fruitless, but had not even attracted as nu-
merous an assembly, or excited as much interest, as
an ordinary party struggle on some petty point of
factitious interest, forgotten as soon as fought.

The attention of the working-classes was called
by their leaders to the contrast between the interest
occasioned by the endangered constitution of Jamaica,
a petty and exhausted colony, and the claims for the
same constitutional rights by the working millions of
England. In the first instance, not a member was
absent from his place; men were brought indeed from
distant capitals to participate in the struggle and to
decide it; the debate lasted for days, almost for
weeks; not a public man of light and leading in the
country withheld the expression of his opinion; the
fate of governments was involved in it; cabinets were
overthrown and reconstructed in the throes and tumult
of the strife, and, for the first time for a long period,
the Sovereign personally interposed in public transac-
tions with a significance of character which made
the working-classes almost believe that the privileged
had at last found a master, and the unfranchised re-

SYBIL

gained their natural chief. The mean position which
the Saxon multitude occupied, as distinguished from
the Jamaica planters, sunk deep into their hearts.

From that time all hope of relief from the demon-
stration of a high moral conduct in the millions, and
the exhibition of that well-regulated order of public
life which would intimate their fitness for the posses-
sion and fulfilment of public rights, vanished. The
party of violence, a small minority, as is usually the
case, but consisting of men of determined character,
triumphed; and the outbreak at Birmingham was the
first consequence of those reckless counsels that were
destined in the course of the ensuing years to inflict
on the working-classes of this country so much suf-
fering and disaster.

It was about this time, a balmy morning of July,
that Sybil, tempted by the soft sunshine, and a long-
ing for the sight of flowers and turf and the spread of
winding waters, went forth from her gloomy domicile
to those beautiful gardens that bloom in that once
melancholy region of marsh, celebrated in old days
only for its Dutch canal and its Chinese bridge, and
now not unworthy of the royal park that encloses
them. Except here and there a pretty nursery-maid
with her interesting charge — some beautiful child with
nodding plume, immense bow, and gorgeous sash —
the gardens were vacant. Indeed it was only at this
early hour that Sybil found from experience that it
was agreeable in London for a woman unaccompanied
to venture abroad. There is no European city where
our fair sisters are so little independent as in our me-
tropolis— to our shame.

Something of the renovating influence of a beauti-
ful nature was needed by the daughter of Gerard. She

412 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

was at this moment anxious and dispirited. The out-
break at Birmingham, the conviction that such pro-
ceedings must ultimately prove fatal to the cause to
which she was devoted, the dark apprehension that
her father was in some manner implicated in this
movement, which had commenced with so much
public disaster, and which menaced consequences still
more awful; all these events, and fears, and sad fore-
bodings, acted with immense influence on a tempera-
ment which, though gifted with even a sublime courage,
was singularly sensitive. The quick and teeming im-
agination of Sybil conjured up a thousand fears which
were in some degree unfounded, in a great degree
exaggerated; but this is the inevitable lot of the creative
mind practising on the inexperienced.

The shock too had been sudden. The two months
that had elapsed since she had parted, as she supposed
for ever, from Egremont, while they had not less
abounded than the preceding time in that pleasing
public excitement which her father's career, in her
estimation alike useful, honourable, and distinguished,
occasioned her, had been fruitful in some sources of
satisfaction of a softer and more domestic character.
The acquaintance of Hatton, of whom they saw a
great deal, had very much contributed to the increased
amenity of her life. He was a most agreeable, in-
structive, and obHging companion; who seemed pe-
culiarly to possess the art of making life pleasant by
the adroit management of unobtrusive resources. He
lent Sybil books; and all that he recommended to her
notice were of a kind that harmonised with her sen-
timent and taste. He furnished her from his library
with splendid works of art, illustrative of these periods
of our history, and those choice and costly edifices

SYBIL

413

which were associated with her fondest thought and
fancy. He placed in her room the best periodical
literature of the day, which for her was a new world;
he furnished her with newspapers whose columns of
discussion taught her that the opinions she had em-
braced were not unquestioned; as she had never seen
a journal in her life before, except a stray number of
the 'Mowbray Phalanx,' or the metropolitan publica-
tion which was devoted to the cause of the National
Convention, and reported her father's speeches, the
effect of this reading on her intelligence was, to say
the least, suggestive.

Many a morning, too, when Gerard was disengaged,
Hatton would propose that they should show Sybil
something of the splendour or the rarities of the metrop-
olis; its public buildings, museums, and galleries of art.
Sybil, though uninstructed in painting, had that native
taste which requires only observation to arrive at true
results. She was much interested with all she saw
and all that occurred, and her gratification was
heightened by the society of an individual who not
only sympathised with all she felt, but who, if she
made an inquiry, was ever ready with an instructive
reply. Hatton poured forth the taste and treasures of
a well-stored and refined intelligence. And then, too,
always easy, bland, and considerate; and though with
luxuries and conveniences at his command, to participate
in which, under any other circumstances, might have
been embarrassing to his companions, with so much
tact, that either by an allusion to early days, happy
days when he owed so much to Gerard's father, or
some other mode equally felicitous, he contrived com-
pletely to maintain among them the spirit of equality.

In the evening, Hatton generally looked in when

414 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Gerard was at home, and on Sundays they were
always together. Their common faith was a bond
of union which led them to the same altar, and
on that day Hatton had obtained their promise always
to dine with him. He was careful to ascertain each
holy day at what chapel the music was most exqui-
site, that the most passionate taste of Sybil might be
gratified. Indeed, during this residence in London,
the opportunity it afforded of making her acquainted
with some of the great masters of the human voice
was perhaps to Sybil a source of pleasure not the
least important. For, though it was not deemed con-
sistent with the future discipline which she contem-
plated to enter a theatre, there were yet occasions
which permitted her, under every advantage, to listen
to the performance of the masterpieces of sacred
melody. Alone, with Hatton and her father, she often
poured forth those tones of celestial sweetness and
ethereal power that had melted the soul of Egremont
amid the ruins of Marney Abbey.

More intimately acquainted with Sybil Gerard, Hat-
ton had shrunk from the project that he had at first
so crudely formed. There was something about her
that awed, while it fascinated him. He did not re-
linquish his purpose, for it was a rule of his life never
to do that; but he postponed the plans of its fulfil-
ment. Hatton was not, what is commonly under-
stood by the phrase, in love with Sybil: certainly not
passionately in love with her. With all his daring
and talents, and fine taste, there was in Hatton such
a vein of thorough good sense, that it was impossi-
ble for him to act or even to think anything that was
ridiculous. He wished still to marry Sybil for the
great object that we have stated; he had a mind quite

SYBIL

415

equal to appreciate her admirable qualities, but sense
enough to wish that she were a less dazzling creature,
because then he would have a better chance of ac-
complishing his end. He perceived, when he had had
a due opportunity to study her character, that the
cloister was the natural catastrophe impending over
a woman who, with an exalted mind, great abilities,
a fine and profound education, and almost super-
natural charms, found herself born and rooted in the
ranks of a degraded population.

All this Hatton knew; it was a conclusion he had
arrived at by a gradual process of induction, and by
vigilant observation that in its study of character had
rarely been deceived; and when, one evening, with
an art that could not be suspected, he sounded Ger-
ard on the future of his daughter, he found that the
clear intellect and straightforward sagacity of the
father had arrived at the same result. 'She wishes,'
said Gerard, 'to take the veil, and I only oppose it
for a time, that she may have some knowledge of
life and a clear conception of what she is about to
do. I wish not that she should hereafter reproach
her father. But, to my mind, Sybil is right. She
cannot look to marriage : no man that she could marry
would be worthy of her.'

During these two months, and especially during
the last, Morley was rarely in London, though ever
much with Gerard, and often with his daughter,
during his visits. The necessary impulse had been
given to the affairs of the Convention, the delegates
had visited the members, the preparations for the
presentation of the National Petition had been com-
pleted; the overthrow of the Whig government, the
abortive effort of Sir Robert Peel, the return of the

4i6 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Whig administration, and the consequent measures
had occasioned a delay of two months in the pres-
entation of the great document: it was well for
Gerard to remain, who was a leader in debate, and
whose absence for a week would have endangered
his position as the head of a party, but these con-
siderations did not influence Morley, who had already
found great inconvenience in managing his journal at
a distance; so, about the middle of May, he had re-
turned to Mowbray, coming up occasionally by the
train if anything important were stirring, or his vote
could be of service to his friend and colleague. The
affair of Birmingham, however, had alarmed Morley,
and he had written up to Gerard that he should
instantly repair to town. Indeed he was expected
the very morning that Sybil, her father having gone
to the Convention, where there were at this very
moment fiery debates, went forth to take the morning
air of summer in the gardens of St. James' Park.

It was a real summer day; large, round, glossy,
fleecy clouds, as white and shining as glaciers, stud-
ded with their immense and immovable forms the
deep blue sky. There was not even a summer
breeze, though the air was mellow, balmy and ex-
hilarating. There was a bloom upon the trees, the
waters glittered, the prismatic wild-fowl dived, breathed
again, and again disappeared. Beautiful children, fresh
and sweet as the new-born rose, glanced about with
the gestures and sometimes the voices of Paradise. And
in the distance rose the sacred towers of the great
Western Minster.

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions
of existence! A curse upon those who vulgarise and
desecrate these holy haunts; breaking the hearts of

SYBIL

417

nursery-maids, and smoking tobacco in the palace of
the rose!

The mental clouds dispelled as Sybil felt the fresh-
ness and fragrance of nature. The colour came to
her cheek; the deep brightness returned to her eye:
her step, that at first had been languid, and if not
melancholy, at least contemplative, became active and
animated. She forgot the cares of life, and was
touched by all the sense of all its enjoyment. To
move, to breathe, to feel the sunbeam, were sensible
and surpassing pleasures. Cheerful by nature, not-
withstanding her stately thoughts and solemn life, a
brilliant smile played on her seraphic face, as she
marked the wild passage of the daring birds, or
watched the thoughtless grace of infancy.

She rested herself on a bench beneath a branching
elm, and her eye, which for some time had followed
the various objects that had attracted it, was now
fixed in abstraction on the sunny waters. The visions
of past life rose before her. It was one of those
reveries when the incidents of our existence are
mapped before us, when each is considered with re-
lation to the rest, and assumes in our knowledge its
distinct and absolute position; when, as it were, we
take stock of our experience, and ascertain how rich
sorrow and pleasure, feeling and thought, intercourse
with our fellow-creatures and the fortuitous mysteries
of life, have made us in wisdom.

The quick intelligence and the ardent imagination
of Sybil had made her comprehend with fervour the
two ideas that had been impressed on her young
mind; the oppression of her Church and the degra-
dation of her people. Educated in solitude and ex-
changing thoughts only with individuals of the same

14 B. D.— 27

41 8 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

sympathies, these impressions had resolved them-
selves into one profound and gloomy conviction that
the world was divided only between the oppressors
and the oppressed. With her, to be one of the peo-
ple was to be miserable and innocent; one of the
privileged, a luxurious tyrant. In the cloister, in her
garden, amid the scenes of suffering which she often
visited and always solaced, she had raised up two
phantoms which with her represented human nature.

But the experience of the last few months had
operated a great change in these impressions. She
had seen enough to suspect that the world was a
more complicated system than she had preconceived.
There was not that strong and rude simplicity in its
organisation which she had supposed. The charac-
ters were more various, the motives more mixed, the
classes more blended, the elements of each more
subtle and diversified, than she had imagined.
The people, she found, was not that pure embodi-
ment of unity of feeling, of interest, and of purpose,
which she had pictured in her abstractions. The
people had enemies among the people: their own
passions; which made them often sympathise, often
combine, with the privileged. Her father, with all
his virtues, all his abilities, singleness of purpose, and
simplicity of aim, encountered rivals in their own
Convention, and was beset by open, or, still worse,
secret foes.

Sybil, whose mind had been nurtured with great
thoughts, and with whom success or failure ahke par-
took of the heroic, who had hoped for triumph, but
who was prepared for sacrifice, found to her surprise
that great thoughts have very little to do with the
business of the world; that human affairs, even in an

SYBIL

419

age of revolution, are the subject of compromise; and
that the essence of compromise is littleness. She
thought that the people, calm and collected, conscious
at last of their strength and confident in their holy
cause, had but to express their pure and noble con-
victions by the delegates of their choice, and that an
antique and decrepit authority must bow before the
irresistible influence of their moral power. These
delegates of their choice turned out to be a plebeian
senate of wild ambitions and sinister and selfish ends,
while the decrepit authority that she had been taught
existed only by the sufferance of the millions, was com-
pact and organised, with every element of physical
power at its command, and supported by the in-
terests, the sympathies, the honest convictions, and
the strong prejudices of classes influential not merely
from their wealth but even by their numbers.

Nor could she resist the belief that the feeling of
the rich towards the poor was not that sentiment of
unmingled hate and scorn which she associated with
Norman conquerors and feudal laws. She would as-
cribe rather the want of sympathy that unquestiona-
bly exists between wealth and work in England, to
mutual ignorance between the classes which possess
these two great elements of national prosperity; and
though the source of that ignorance was to be sought
in antecedent circumstances of violence and oppres-
sion, the consequences perhaps had outlived the causes,
as customs survive opinions.

Sybil looked towards Westminster, to those proud
and passionate halls where assembles the Parliament
of England; that rapacious, violent, and haughty
body, which had brought kings and prelates to the
block; spoiled churches and then seized the sacred

420 BENJAMIN DISRAELI

manors for their personal prey; invested their own
possessions with infinite privileges, and then mort-
gaged for their state and empire the labour of count-
less generations. Could the voice of solace sound
from such a quarter?

Sybil unfolded a journal which she had brought;
not now to be read for the first time; but now for
the first time to be read alone, undisturbed, in a
scene of softness and serenity. It contained a report
of the debate in the House of Commons on the pres-
entation of the National Petition; that important docu-
ment which had been the means of drawing forth
Sybil from her solitude, and of teaching her some-
thing of that world of which she had often pondered,
and yet which she had so inaccurately preconceived.

Yes! there was one voice that had sounded in
that proud Parliament, that, free from the slang of
faction, had dared to express immortal truths: the
voice of a noble, who without being a demagogue,
had upheld the popular cause; had pronounced his
conviction that the rights of labour were as sacred as
those of property; that if a difference were to be es-
tablished, the interests of the living wealth ought to
be preferred; who had declared that the social happi-
ness of the millions should be the first object of a
statesman, and that, if this were not achieved, thrones
and dominions, the pomp and power of courts and
empires, were alike worthless.

With a heart not without emotion, with a kindling
cheek, and eyes suffused with tears, Sybil read the
speech of Egremont. She ceased; still holding the
paper with one hand, she laid on it the other with
tenderness, and looked up to breathe, as it were, for
relief. Before her stood the orator himself.